Student Experiences at Western Governors University (WGU)

rep21

I've got a couple questions for you guys. First, I transferred in KET1(intro to programming) and WDV1(CIW Database). I don't have any real programming background nor have I taken a database course. The only programming of any sorts that I've done are a few shell scripting exercises in a couple unix/linux courses I took. Should I add these courses back to my list of courses to be taken, or should I just study their material in preparation for the second programming and other database courses?

Second, I know a lot of you have been grouping similar courses together as material overlaps. I plan to group mine similarly and also by courses I feel I can complete faster. Should I frontload the harder courses like the programming/database courses and move the less intensive ones likes Security+/Management courses towards the end?

astrogeek

erpadmin wrote: »

The graduation rate is misleading toward all students because it only accounts for first time students with NO college background. That rate doesn't include transfer students like many of us who are on these threads (those with a prior college background.)

My best advice for students who want the WGU experience, but do not have prior college would be do to www.straighterline.com

That's pretty interesting, and I've read a little about straighterline on this site before but haven't really looked into it.

I have a little college experience, just community college stuff, don't have an AA and not really close to getting it either. How are the straighterline courses different than if I just enrolled in WGU? I'd like to enroll around next spring or summer, but right now I'm working on CCNP and want to get that out of the way. I've mostly just taken computer courses and so I'll need whatever general ed requirements there are. I'm interested in the BA in Network Security.

I'm also kinda wondering if I should just stick to focusing on Cisco certs right now, or at least until I get a bit more experience in IT. I'm just a bit anxious because I see so many job postings requiring a Bachelors degree.

erpadmin

astrogeek wrote: »

That's pretty interesting, and I've read a little about straighterline on this site before but haven't really looked into it.

I have a little college experience, just community college stuff, don't have an AA and not really close to getting it either. How are the straighterline courses different than if I just enrolled in WGU? I'd like to enroll around next spring or summer, but right now I'm working on CCNP and want to get that out of the way. I've mostly just taken computer courses and so I'll need whatever general ed requirements there are. I'm interested in the BA in Network Security.

I'm also kinda wondering if I should just stick to focusing on Cisco certs right now, or at least until I get a bit more experience in IT. I'm just a bit anxious because I see so many job postings requiring a Bachelors degree.

If you have at least 15 credits from community college, that might be enough. I only transferred 22 credits from about 45 credits worth of college to WGU (not counting certs, though I did have a computer literacy course that I literally slept through to get my A...WGU was still going to make me take CIW Web Foundations though.) You gotta understand though that my high school was a private school....it wasn't the best private school nor was I the most studious student, but it prepared me for writing papers and did a barely decent job at prepping me for math. The best college I did well at was at the catholic college I transferred to from my stint at community college. However...my old "newer" habits were slowly starting to creep up on me, and I had to drop out of that college. Since this school was expensive, and I was footing the bill myself, I could not continue.

To answer your questions about straighterline, the general education courses are a lot cheaper than doing them in WGU. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that my A+/Network+ were old, I would have done Straighterline first. The only reason I didn't do this was because my A+/Network+ would have exceeded the five year mark for me. If a cert is older than five years, you have to retake them...there was no way I was going to do entry-level certs again....(out of principle, not because I can't pass them....trust me, I can. )

It's win/win/win, in my opinion. You get the structure of learning the material, you finish at your own pace, and the courses are cheaper than WGU. If you didn't have a background in the material for GE classes OR you did but it was weak, straighterline would count toward a good deal of the GE requirement. Also, you actually learn a real college science course the right way, like in Chemistry or Biology instead of taking a joke class like INC1/INT1 [busy work]. WGU's math was a bit harder for me, but if math was your thing, it's probably easy.

If you want to work on some GE's while gunning for the CCNP, you'll find that it's not impossible:

Transfer College Credits To Western Governors University - StraighterLine

Freshman Year College get started with online college courses - StraighterLine

petedude

While Straighterline is a good resource for WGU students, don't forget that other schools will accept credits as well. I still say that for many students the best route is to get an Associates from Charter Oak/Excelsior/Thomas Edison, then apply to WGU-- and Straighterline is a perfect fit for those "Big 3" transfer schools.

My question of the day is:

Anybody know what happens if you submit part of your tasks to Taskstream before your course is opened up, and the rest after you finish? I know if you complete a course in Taskstream without it being approved it gets listed as "Requirements Met". Reason I'm asking is, I'm tempted to submit some of my GUT1 work before my mentor officially opens it. My guess is that it would be listed as passed if I finished Task 4 after my mentor opens it, but I thought I'd bounce this around here.

erpadmin

petedude wrote: »

Anybody know what happens if you submit part of your tasks to Taskstream before your course is opened up, and the rest after you finish? I know if you complete a course in Taskstream without it being approved it gets listed as "Requirements Met". Reason I'm asking is, I'm tempted to submit some of my GUT1 work before my mentor officially opens it. My guess is that it would be listed as passed if I finished Task 4 after my mentor opens it, but I thought I'd bounce this around here.

I have never attempted handing in Taskstream tasks before it was available. The only thing I've done that was close to that was getting TS tasks emailed to me and doing it before it was available for LET1. By the time it was open, I handed my tasks in and I was done with it....with one revision to do. (I'll admit it was done pretty hastily....but I complied with what the grader wanted....) It was still done within one week of it being available in TS.

This tells me that TS will not open up a task before you are enrolled. In my case that was a good idea....I would not have been done before my first term was up, and 100% SAP would have been in jeopardy.

I would suggest not reinventing the wheel on that one....it must be a pretty difficult TS (guessing it's programming). Work through it as best as you can.

Nobylspoon

MGC1 tonight then ORC1 tomorrow night. I am skimming over some of the chapters for MGC1 again. I got a 68 on my pre-assessment last week. I will take another pre-assessment about an hour before the exam to see if I need to cram any last minute topics.


Update: Passed MGC1 with an 80%

echo465

This Javascript class is killing me. It's like, my brain is going 'la la la this isn't useful to you for Network Admin work, not listening, la la la la, you should go play Minecraft, la la la, hey you haven't checked your email in a while, la la la la la la, hey your cellphone just blinked, la la la la la la la...'

astrogeek

Well I have about 30 credits but as I mentioned mostly just computer classes. I'll look more into straighterline for general ed....there is a reason I have been avoiding those classes!

echo465 wrote: »

This Javascript class is killing me. It's like, my brain is going 'la la la this isn't useful to you for Network Admin work, not listening, la la la la, you should go play Minecraft, la la la, hey you haven't checked your email in a while, la la la la la la, hey your cellphone just blinked, la la la la la la la...'

That's how I am whenever I study.....in fact, right now I should be....ugh, ok, back to CCNP work!

veritas_libertas

I just want to take a moment and say welcome to all three of the folks I referred last month. I received a nice package in the mail yesterday from WGU, that had within it a stack of nice WGU binders with a pen in each one. Nice.

Nobylspoon

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I just want to take a moment and say welcome to all three of the folks I referred last month. I received a nice package in the mail yesterday from WGU, that had within it a stack of nice WGU binders with a pen in each one. Nice.

I just got one of those myself. I was so happy to get something other than the pen/pencil set in rosewood case. As much as I like them, I already have 5 sets, lol.

demonfurbie

yep im up to 2 of those as well

i could use a water bottle if yall are reading this ... WE LIKE OTHER STUFF TOO

Nobylspoon

demonfurbie wrote: »

yep im up to 2 of those as well

i could use a water bottle if yall are reading this ... WE LIKE OTHER STUFF TOO

I just want 3 more 'Liquid Motivation' cups so I can have a matching set

drew726

passed 70-642 yesterday...only exam left to take is 70-646...wooooo so close

demonfurbie

drew726 wrote: »

passed 70-642 yesterday...only exam left to take is 70-646...wooooo so close

did ya find 70-642 harder than 70-640?

i found labsim quite lacking on that test and thats all wgu gives ya

erpadmin

demonfurbie wrote: »

did ya find 70-642 harder than 70-640?

i found labsim quite lacking on that test and thats all wgu gives ya

TechNet, my friend....it helped me with both. Though if I had to do it over again, I would have stuck with doing the 70-642 first....then 70-640. So much overlap.

drew726

demonfurbie wrote: »

did ya find 70-642 harder than 70-640?

i found labsim quite lacking on that test and thats all wgu gives ya

I thought they were about equal, although if you did CCENT first then 642 is a little bit easier. I did most of my studying from the MCTS training kit book at work or at the library and did all the lab work on there on my laptop. When I got home from the library trying to relax, I played all the labsim videos over and over so it gets implanted in my subconscious. Not sure if it helped but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting time. I have 3 monitors at home, so one window was always showing labsim vids in full screen.

Nobylspoon

drew726 wrote: »

passed 70-642 yesterday...only exam left to take is 70-646...wooooo so close

Congrats! I am looking forward to working on the MCITP exams. I should be able to start next month.

Excellent1

Just wanted to take a moment to congratulate everyone on all the progress. I haven't been keeping up with the thread much lately, but I've seen quite a few successes lately--way to go, all.

I just finished up the GTT1 equivalent (KFT1 for me). Really enjoyed the programming courses as they were all new to me. Some of the course material was somewhat weak (in my opinion), but the overall experience was great. I will keep dabbling with Java and move on to some other languages in the future.

I'm now officially starting on the Cisco material (finally, FINALLY going to put together my lab!), so it's all good. I plan on celebrating Christmas as a graduate, but time will tell.

Good luck to everyone in their studies.

ehnde

Excellent1 wrote: »

Just wanted to take a moment to congratulate everyone on all the progress. I haven't been keeping up with the thread much lately, but I've seen quite a few successes lately--way to go, all.

I just finished up the GTT1 equivalent (KFT1 for me). Really enjoyed the programming courses as they were all new to me. Some of the course material was somewhat weak (in my opinion), but the overall experience was great. I will keep dabbling with Java and move on to some other languages in the future.

I'm now officially starting on the Cisco material (finally, FINALLY going to put together my lab!), so it's all good. I plan on celebrating Christmas as a graduate, but time will tell.

Good luck to everyone in their studies.

Grats on passing GTT1/KFT1! Do you think the code you wrote working towards your assessment could be used in a "coding portfolio"? (for employers to look at)

Does anyone have any comments on the lapse between when you have a course unlocked and when the content is actually available? I've been waiting for 2 days now to get access to the testout labsim material for TSV1. If possible I'd like to avoid this delay with other courses.

Excellent1

ehnde wrote: »

Grats on passing GTT1/KFT1! Do you think the code you wrote working towards your assessment could be used in a "coding portfolio"? (for employers to look at)

Does anyone have any comments on the lapse between when you have a course unlocked and when the content is actually available? I've been waiting for 2 days now to get access to the testout labsim material for TSV1. If possible I'd like to avoid this delay with other courses.

For the assessments I turned in, I'm fairly confident that I would be able to use these as examples of my work. That being said, I cannot see anyone using just these courses as a platform to secure a job, unless it was an absolute beginner level position. One of the things I tried to do with my programs was to implement different methods of doing different things. For example, for data validation, in one program I used do/while loops in some areas, while loops with boolean flags in others, and sentinel values inside loops for yet another--just to see if I could get it to work properly and make sure I understood it. To be sure, these are elementary concepts, not flashy code that would score a position, but it's a solid start.

As for your access to resources, that's mostly dependent on your mentor. I always had my resources unlocked before I was ready to begin working on a course. That allowed me to never have to wait on anything and it's worked out well so far. Your mentor can open resources for courses that aren't even in your AAV yet, so work it out with him/her and see whether they are willing to work with you on it. Good luck.

ehnde

Thanks Excellent1! I'll focus on communication with the mentor...paying $3k for tuition then not being able to make any progress is not cool.

drew726

I remember telling you guys about how I had a horrible mentor. Well, she resigned without giving a two-weeks notice. Man...thank god I didn't need much help from her regardless.

petedude

drew726 wrote: »

I remember telling you guys about how I had a horrible mentor. Well, she resigned without giving a two-weeks notice. Man...thank god I didn't need much help from her regardless.

While there are mentors who obviously shouldn't be in their jobs, it's not exactly a cakewalk either. WGU is putting increasing demands on them-- more students, more pressure to have students progress quickly, more reports and paperwork (including those pesky reports highlighting slowpokes like me).

Psoasman

I filled out the WGU application last night, updated my FAFSA, and sent my certification credentials over. Planning on doing the readiness assessments this week, when I can find some quiet time at home. How is the math on the readiness exam? Hopefully, not much more than basic algebra.

erpadmin

Psoasman wrote: »

I filled out the WGU application last night, updated my FAFSA, and sent my certification credentials over. Planning on doing the readiness assessments this week, when I can find some quiet time at home. How is the math on the readiness exam? Hopefully, not much more than basic algebra.

Believe me, you won't lose any sleep with the math. It was easier than any basic skills exam. You'll be fine.

petedude

erpadmin wrote: »

Believe me, you won't lose any sleep with the math. It was easier than any basic skills exam. You'll be fine.

I'll second this, but quiet time is important. This is definitely a test better done without screaming, yelling, playing kids and a TV blaring (all of which happened to me during my entry assessments).

On another note, Taskstream nearly has me pacing the floor. Day 3 of waiting for an assignment grade I really wanted to have before the weekend. There's still enough window to give them 5-7 days, but I wanted that paper done!

Psoasman

Finally got some peace and quiet and finished up my readiness assessments today!

erpadmin

petedude wrote: »

On another note, Taskstream nearly has me pacing the floor. Day 3 of waiting for an assignment grade I really wanted to have before the weekend. There's still enough window to give them 5-7 days, but I wanted that paper done!

Speaking of Taskstream, does anyone know how long we have access to Taskstream after one graduates? I'll have to remember asking my mentor this on my next call, though I suppose I can ask Student Services as well. Just curious.

veritas_libertas

erpadmin wrote: »

Speaking of Taskstream, does anyone know how long we have access to Taskstream after one graduates? I'll have to remember asking my mentor this on my next call, though I suppose I can ask Student Services as well. Just curious.

Why are you interested? I'm just curious

sheckler

Once I get my grade for capstone, I plan to never see taskstream again.