Student Experiences at Western Governors University (WGU)

This thread is intended for students to write about their experiences at Western Governors University.

Please keep it civil, and do not spend your time bashing the school, and its policies. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if you have a problem you need to take it up with your professor or mentor. Please no Flaming on this thread.

You can ask for help with a referral (used to avoid paying the application fee) on the following thread: http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/55634-wgu-refer-friend-thread-those-seeking-referral.html

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Comments

NOLAJ

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Anyone pass this class recently? I would really like to get some perspective on how hard it is, and how deep I should study.

Which class?

veritas_libertas

NOLAJ wrote: »

Which class?

WSV1: Web Design

NOLAJ

Uggggh. Not on my degree plan...

NOLAJ

TLeTourneau wrote: »

INC1 wasn't bad for me but I'm having a heck of a time with INT1 task one. I just can't seem to wrap my head around it. I think I'm overthinking it but I'm having a hard time simplifying it.

Message me your email. I can send you the one I just received back. Passed on 1st try. Maybe it could help give you a little direction.

CompuTron99

veritas_libertas wrote: »

WSV1: Web Design

Which exam does that course cover?

veritas_libertas

CompuTron99 wrote: »

Which exam does that course cover?

The CIW Web Design Specialist: 1D0:520. It use to be called the CIW Site Designer.

NOLAJ

Books 24x7 is AWESOME!!

Cpl.Klinger

Mentor call done yesterday, classes set up for the term (14CU's to start), already working on stuff for classes. I may not go as fast as some others, but that's just the way that I learn and fits into my plan for the next few years anyway. Going to be awesome getting down to the nitty gritty!

petedude

NOLAJ wrote: »

Books 24x7 is AWESOME!!

It took me more than one term to realize this, but Books24x7 is quite a resource. I even found a book on there that might be a better core text for the Java/OOP course rather than the one WGU is using.

joehalford01

petedude wrote: »

It took me more than one term to realize this, but Books24x7 is quite a resource. I even found a book on there that might be a better core text for the Java/OOP course rather than the one WGU is using.

It is definitely awesome, I just can't get used to reading on a screen though. I ended up ordering my books from Amazon.

demonfurbie

joehalford01 wrote: »

It is definitely awesome, I just can't get used to reading on a screen though. I ended up ordering my books from Amazon.

http://mobile.skillport.books24x7.com/

group code is wgu

it works on kindle/tablet/phone if ya cant read on a screen

hiddenknight821

Am I the only one that hates Netbeans? I will be starting the KFT1 tasks soon, but I was just going through the COS to be prepared for later, and it said Netbeans is highly recommended. Yet, I can't find a reason why we needed an IDE. I seriously think IDE is an overkill for beginners since they always added bloated codes, libraries, and packages that we don't need to distract us. I think JGrasp can get the job done, but I am not sure until I see it for myself later after I pass Project+ hopefully next week.

veritas_libertas

demonfurbie wrote: »

http://mobile.skillport.books24x7.com/

group code is wgu

it works on kindle/tablet/phone if ya cant read on a screen

Yeah, but having to constantly scroll with the kindle to hit the next button gets old.

sheckler

Netbeans makes it easy to visually create a GUI, which you need to do for the first task. If someone wants to continue on and become a programmer, I could see how it would be good to learn how to make them the hard way, but the class doesn't expect that. Also in the next class you have to work with mysql, and it connects to that nicely.

demonfurbie

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Yeah, but having to constantly scroll with the kindle to hit the next button gets old.

true but its better than reading it on a lcd at least for me

erpadmin

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Am I the only one that hates Netbeans? I will be starting the KFT1 tasks soon, but I was just going through the COS to be prepared for later, and it said Netbeans is highly recommended. Yet, I can't find a reason why we needed an IDE. I seriously think IDE is an overkill for beginners since they always added bloated codes, libraries, and packages that we don't need to distract us. I think JGrasp can get the job done, but I am not sure until I see it for myself later after I pass Project+ hopefully next week.

The way I see it, you have one of two choices:

A) Reinvent the wheel and make the journey longer.

OR

Take the wheel that's given, and just do what's required to get there....

Not for nothing, but for a class like Java, I would just stick with the COS and do what's required. For many of my classes I didn't have to do that, but for some, like QL(x)1, I found it advantageous to do so IF I was not familiar with the subject matter, or I was, but not at a master level like programming.

No need to reinvent the wheel if you don't have to, is what I'm saying; just do what they want you to do.

Hypntick

erpadmin wrote: »

I would suggest planning out LAT1 as soon as possible. If I were you, I would just get your mentor to email you the taskstream tasks for LAT1. Then I would work on that independently while you are doing your other classes, like INC1, INT1 whatever.

Suggestion noted and taken. Had my bi-weekly mentor call today, requested info on LAT1 as well as INT1 and TWA1 as i'd like to get a head start on those if possible. If I can go ahead and do all the stuff for LAT1, TWA1 and INT1 before I even start the next term, or at least get it into where I can submit the work, I can put myself in a 8 CU position right off. Which minus cap of course gives me 19 to finish out the term. Should be able to knock it out no problems.

petedude

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Am I the only one that hates Netbeans? I will be starting the KFT1 tasks soon, but I was just going through the COS to be prepared for later, and it said Netbeans is highly recommended. Yet, I can't find a reason why we needed an IDE. I seriously think IDE is an overkill for beginners since they always added bloated codes, libraries, and packages that we don't need to distract us. I think JGrasp can get the job done, but I am not sure until I see it for myself later after I pass Project+ hopefully next week.

I think it's good to have exposure to an IDE early, but it really won't make much sense to you or be horribly useful until AFTER you finish your Java courses. These IDEs are slow, resource-hoggy and pack a lot of extra default garbage into your programs (yes, you can edit your default template, but again, you won't understand what you're doing to that template until you finish these courses!).

I've been using jEdit for most of my Java programming and it's been enough, compile/run at the command line. I occasionally use other editors (I do most of my Java stuff in Ubuntu) to cut/paste into for drafting, revising outside of the main() method, etc.

You should install and get a quick look at NetBeans for the sake of being able to look at your COS and say you've done it (on that score, it wouldn't hurt to install and look at Eclipse, either). Keep it around until you finish these courses just in case (you should keep any tools you find handy until you're done with these, trust me).

If you do any heavy-duty programming in the future the IDEs should be immensely handy, but for the light-to-medium work you're doing for these courses a basic editor should be enough to get the job done.

erpadmin

It's now Officially Official...

Got the diploma in my hands and saw my name on it. Last time I had a diploma with my name on it was high school! My eyes swelled up again, but it was more of actually having a degree with my name on it.

I can tell you now....my WGU degree is not worthless!! Can't wait to get home so I can frame this badboy up!

CompuTron99

erpadmin wrote: »

It's now Officially Official...

Got the diploma in my hands and saw my name on it. Last time I had a diploma with my name on it was high school! My eyes swelled up again, but it was more of actually having a degree with my name on it.

I can tell you now....my WGU degree is not worthless!! Can't wait to get home so I can frame this badboy up!

Congrats Again.. I can't wait to have that feeling as well.

hiddenknight821

sheckler wrote: »

Netbeans makes it easy to visually create a GUI, which you need to do for the first task. If someone wants to continue on and become a programmer, I could see how it would be good to learn how to make them the hard way, but the class doesn't expect that. Also in the next class you have to work with mysql, and it connects to that nicely.

GUI? Eh, I never tried developing one from scratch, but the closeset I got to was JApplet. I can't wait to give it a try soon.

petedude wrote: »

I think it's good to have exposure to an IDE early, but it really won't make much sense to you or be horribly useful until AFTER you finish your Java courses. These IDEs are slow, resource-hoggy and pack a lot of extra default garbage into your programs (yes, you can edit your default template, but again, you won't understand what you're doing to that template until you finish these courses!).

I've been using jEdit for most of my Java programming and it's been enough, compile/run at the command line. I occasionally use other editors (I do most of my Java stuff in Ubuntu) to cut/paste into for drafting, revising outside of the main() method, etc.

You should install and get a quick look at NetBeans for the sake of being able to look at your COS and say you've done it (on that score, it wouldn't hurt to install and look at Eclipse, either). Keep it around until you finish these courses just in case (you should keep any tools you find handy until you're done with these, trust me).

If you do any heavy-duty programming in the future the IDEs should be immensely handy, but for the light-to-medium work you're doing for these courses a basic editor should be enough to get the job done.

Yes! You read my mind! I am thinking about going with the JGrasp complier and learn the hard way, so the bloated templates don't interfere with my work. My C++ experience is more in-depth than my Java experience, but I have took Java courses before. The farthest I have gotten to was mutators and accessors with methods and classes. I used Eclipse IDE in high school, and at that time, I didn't know squat about Java, but I felt so lost in class, that I barely understood what I was doing until I went to college. I hated Java in high school, but then I began to fall in love with it after taking a summer course at University of Washington as part of the summer camp program after my freshman college year. They were using JGrasp, but I was still confortable with Eclipse until I had to take another java class the follow fall for college. I had no choice but to use JGrasp, and I realized how much harder it is but at the same time how much I can remember programming when I do everything from scratch. The hard way eventually gets easier. Also, I like the fact that I am my own debugger so I can find it more quickly while working throught the program rather than at the end. I have to find all the missing parentheses and curly bracelets. I rather do all the heavy lifting for this kind of programming project, but if we're doing tons of heavy programming at a corporate office, then I agree IDE would be appropriate for that.

NOLAJ

erpadmin wrote: »

It's now Officially Official...

Got the diploma in my hands and saw my name on it. Last time I had a diploma with my name on it was high school! My eyes swelled up again, but it was more of actually having a degree with my name on it.

I can tell you now....my WGU degree is not worthless!! Can't wait to get home so I can frame this badboy up!

Congrats!

I'm about a term and a half behind you, I can't wait!!

Psoasman

erpadmin wrote: »

It's now Officially Official...

Got the diploma in my hands and saw my name on it. Last time I had a diploma with my name on it was high school! My eyes swelled up again, but it was more of actually having a degree with my name on it.

I can tell you now....my WGU degree is not worthless!! Can't wait to get home so I can frame this badboy up!

Very nice! Congrats!

petedude

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

GUI? Eh, I never tried developing one from scratch, but the closeset I got to was JApplet. I can't wait to give it a try soon.

I used an old, hard to find piece of shareware called JGUI Developer, IIRC. Generated clean GUI code for my forms, which I only cleaned up a little. I should send the guy some dough.

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Yes! You read my mind! I am thinking about going with the JGrasp complier and learn the hard way, so the bloated templates don't interfere with my work. My C++ experience is more in-depth than my Java experience, but I have took Java courses before. The farthest I have gotten to was mutators and accessors with methods and classes.

That's a good bit of the way through the first course right there.

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

. . . I realized how much harder it is but at the same time how much I can remember programming when I do everything from scratch.

Uh, yeah. That's partly my thinking, too. But then, I learned programming in the old days when you were told to draw flowcharts with a stencil before you even wrote one line of code. Before you even thought of pseudocode, you were supposed to have that flowchart in hand.

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I rather do all the heavy lifting for this kind of programming project, but if we're doing tons of heavy programming at a corporate office, then I agree IDE would be appropriate for that.

After you take the Java/OOP course (the second), you'll see what I mean. I'm starting to scribble notes on recommendations for when I'm "on the other side"-- once I'm an alumni. One would be to move the first OOP course task into the first Java course. Another would be to build bigger projects for OOP tasks 2 and 3, culminating in Task 4-- which might then include an IDE requirement.

And HK-- consider a code beautifier if you're writing by hand. Since I like to write my Java in C style (can't stand the Sun conventions), I use a freeware program called Artistic Style (there are Windows and Linux versions). Does a great job of formatting Java nicely in C style, and cleans up my messes.

Lemonade727

petedude wrote: »

It took me more than one term to realize this, but Books24x7 is quite a resource. I even found a book on there that might be a better core text for the Java/OOP course rather than the one WGU is using.

The Java for Everyone book by Horstmann for the KET1 course is absolutely horrible IMO. I'm finding it way too hard of a read to grasp most concepts presented within the text. I ended up picking up the Head First Java book off of Amazon based on some recommendations by others, so hoping that will help keep me on track. I honestly forgot about Books24x7, but I always end up getting a better grasp for material when reading from a proper book anyways so I'm not going to be upset with my purchase. Just out of curiosity though, which book did you end up running across that you would recommend? Just in case I do need some more interpretations to help let the information sink in. Hoping to be done with both of these courses within the next month and a half or so so I can still finish Tech Writing and Capstone this term.

TomAtkins

Been thinking of going to WGU.

Is WGU just Certs? Or do they have actual classes too (if so where can I see a list)?

Whats the difference between going with them, or just taking the certs on my own?

TIA

Psoasman

TomAtkins wrote: »

Been thinking of going to WGU.

Is WGU just Certs? Or do they have actual classes too (if so where can I see a list)?

Whats the difference between going with them, or just taking the certs on my own?

TIA

You earn certs along with your degree. There are general education classes that go along with whatever degree you choose. With WGU, you will likely have more resources than working alone. They provide LabSim for your cert studies, along with e-books, library, etc.

WGU Online University | Online Degree Programs, Accredited Bachelor's and Master's

TomAtkins

Thanks!

Also how transfer friendly are there?

I have a good 60+ credits (about 2 years worth) from community colleges, programming/IT as well as general electives (no associates degrees), plus a Network+, Security+ and CCNA (working on CCNA-S) now. Will they #1 accept most of my CC credits? and #2 how much time might that shave off the 4-5 years they say it will take?

Hypntick

TomAtkins wrote: »

Thanks!

Also how transfer friendly are there?

I have a good 60+ credits (about 2 years worth) from community colleges, programming/IT as well as general electives (no associates degrees), plus a Network+, Security+ and CCNA (working on CCNA-S) now. Will they #1 accept most of my CC credits? and #2 how much time might that shave off the 4-5 years they say it will take?

Depending on the class/cert I know the timeline is usually 5 years, so if it's older than 5 years, then they don't apply it. Now how much time it might shave off is up to you. I started with over 100 CU to finish before graduating. At almost a year i've got maybe 6 months left, it all depends on how fast you'd like to go. There are folks who have finished in 6 months, I knew 1.5 years was what I wanted to hit and provided no major messups i'm right on target for that.

Psoasman

TomAtkins wrote: »

Thanks!

Also how transfer friendly are there?

I have a good 60+ credits (about 2 years worth) from community colleges, programming/IT as well as general electives (no associates degrees), plus a Network+, Security+ and CCNA (working on CCNA-S) now. Will they #1 accept most of my CC credits? and #2 how much time might that shave off the 4-5 years they say it will take?

Certs are transferable as long as they have been obtained within 5 years. Even if you don't have a degree, they can do a class by class evaluation of your classes. You will probably get some credit for those classes already taken. I received credit for English 101,102 classes taken in 1995, so you should be good there.

As far as the time shaved off, it's relative. How fast can you work through the material? How many hours per week can you devote to your studies? I'd imagine some students may take a term (which is 6 months) to do the Net+, Sec+, and CCNA, so that will save time right there.