Student Experiences at Western Governors University (WGU)

down77

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Well I passed LAE1 today and I only have ABV1 (Windows 7) to finish for this semester.

Congrats! You will be done before you know it. I need to get off my lazy behind and finish the last case study for my current course so I can move on to "more interesting" topics.

veritas_libertas

down77 wrote: »

Congrats! You will be done before you know it. I need to get off my lazy behind and finish the last case study for my current course so I can move on to "more interesting" topics.

Yeah, I will have eight classes done in this first semester. It's all about how aggressive you want to be, and can be with your circumstances.

Earweed wrote:

Congrats! Are you gonna add another class?

I'm considering doing so, but I might just take a break instead.

earweed

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Yeah, I will have eight classes done in this first semester. It's all about how aggressive you want to be, and can be with your circumstances.



I'm considering doing so, but I might just take a break instead.

Probably a good idea to get a little time with the wife. Plus you can get a head start on next term.
Talk to your mentor about what you're planning to take next term and he/she will set you up with the learning resources and communities in advance. That's what I usually do during last month of term, you're just a little ahead of the curve.

themagicone

I started May 1st. So far it's been good. Finished EWB in 3 hours, passed both foundation assessments on Sunday and cleared AAV Tuesday. I'm working on LAC1 now. I got 78% on the pre assessment. My mentor said he wants 100% before approving the final assessment, if he holds that to me I'm going to have an issue. If I can pass a pre assessment at 90% I think I did well. I'm hoping to do 20-30+ CU this term.

bwcarty

themagicone wrote: »

I'm working on LAC1 now. I got 78% on the pre assessment. My mentor said he wants 100% before approving the final assessment, if he holds that to me I'm going to have an issue. If I can pass a pre assessment at 90% I think I did well. I'm hoping to do 20-30+ CU this term.

100% seems harsh, but if it's your first assessment, I can understand him wanting you to be overprepared. What is the passing score for the real test?

I finished 31 credits in my first semester and haven't failed an assessment, yet. With that track record, my mentor has no problem approving my assessment requests as soon as I pass the preassessment.

My final objective assessment (ORC1 - Organizational Behavior) is tonight, and it's looking like it's going to be the hardest one of the program. I took MGC1 (Management) last night, and it wasn't too bad.

veritas_libertas

bwcarty wrote: »

100% seems harsh, but if it's your first assessment, I can understand him wanting you to be overprepared. What is the passing score for the real test?

WoW, that seems very extreme. Oh well, at least you will pass it with no problem. If you Mentor keeps making you get a hundred on all the different classes than I would start asking for a different Mentor to be honest.

themagicone

For Lac1 passing is 58%.

down77

themagicone: Remind your mentor that the premise behind WGU is a competency based model and not a perfect score model. Requiring a student to achieve perfect pre-assessment score could cause undue apprehension and/or anxiety for current and future courses.

The *ONLY* pre-assessment that I took as a WGU undergrad, aside from the required math/english intake assessments, was the LPO1 - leadership and professionalism 12cu course that has since turned into the management and organizational behavior courses that many of you are taking now.

earweed

I took very few preassessments. I took one for WFV1 and LP01 and the rest were not required. I also wasn't trying to rush through to take any final assessments either though. I basically started each class working through the course of study as if it were a "normal" class. For the IT classes I was required to have (early on was measure-up) completed the 3 passes of examfarce before taking the exam.

themagicone

Well I got my assessment scheduled for LAC1 on the 19th, I'm hoping to have my essay done for LAE1 by Thursday next week. And my goal is to have the research paper and presentation done by the 1st of June or shortly after. Follow that up with IT I, natural science and IT II, III. That is my goal for at least through July.

ajmatson

I am so stoked to see all of the activity of TE members attending WGU.

earweed

There are a lot of us here (and there) a lot of that due to veritas.
Time to get back to studies. Studying for the 70-642 and I went back to review subnetting and it's still not clicking with me. Everything else I've studied so far is sticking in my head pretty good, I'm up to routing in the book and decided to review subnetting.

petedude

jahsoul wrote: »

Just to the CIW Foundations pre assessment. smh.

53% (16/30). I split every topic down the middle. Welp, I guess I have to get to studying these encyclopedias.

I hit 75% zooming through it. I actually think it's a really good overview of IT, better than what most students are probably getting in their CIS overview courses elsewhere.

I do need to brush up on the site development material myself, though.

petedude

earweed wrote: »

There are a lot of us here (and there) a lot of that due to veritas.
Time to get back to studies. Studying for the 70-642 and I went back to review subnetting and it's still not clicking with me. Everything else I've studied so far is sticking in my head pretty good, I'm up to routing in the book and decided to review subnetting.

Grab a CCNA or CCENT book-- subnetting is generally way better presented there.

Safari Books used to have Lammle's chapter on subnetting from his CCNA book downloadable as a sample. Don't know if that's still the case.

veritas_libertas

petedude wrote: »

I actually think it's a really good overview of IT, better than what most students are probably getting in their CIS overview courses elsewhere.

I agree with you! I learned some new things, and I found it to be deeper than many of my college classes I took at my community college. It will be especially helpful for students that don't come from an IT background.

earweed

Good idea. We probably have a few available on 24x7. I've already done the ones in the MS Press book. I don't think it'll be necessary to be that strong in subnetting but I plan to eventually do some Cisco and I may as well get good now.

petedude

Hyper-Me wrote: »

passed Project+ yesterday. Glad that barf is over!

To move this to the proper thread. . .

Took the ExamForce pre-assessment a few days ago, came in at 58%. Shouldn't take me long to wrap this one up, but I'm waiting until after Foundations and after Management (next week). Glad the CompTIA book arrived finally, but I have a PMP book on order as well.

Somehow, the fact that CompTIA treats this exam so vaguely rubs off on the various writers, who in turn write boring and vague materials. The PMP stuff I've looked over is SO much better on these fronts.

earweed

The prject+ book WGU uses is very, very dry and every few paragraphs you usually see a reference to what the PMBOK says and then our book goes in a different direction entirely. Maybe you'll do better on the test using an additional book. I only scored 6 points above passing on the exam using our book and I started out scoring in the high 70's for the pre test on exam force.
Good luck on your foundations and management tests.

jahsoul

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I agree with you! I learned some new things, and I found it to be deeper than many of my college classes I took at my community college. It will be especially helpful for students that don't come from an IT background.

I just finished it this morning. It was fairly easy once I read the material....I had a 91%. I guess I gotta give my No Cert Crew membership up...

earweed

jahsoul wrote: »

I just finished it this morning. It was fairly easy once I read the material....I had a 91%. I guess I gotta give my No Cert Crew membership up...

Congrats, good score!
Don't forget to update your detail to proudly show your new cert.

jahsoul

earweed wrote: »

Congrats, good score!
Don't forget to update your detail to proudly show your new cert.

Thanks...just did. Now I have to deal with the Security+ for work and then the CCNA..

earweed

Get Darril Gibson's book and/or Labsim/testout. A lot of students at WGU have been scoring in the high 800's using nothing but the Labsim. A lot of people here have been doing real well just using Darril's book.

Hyper-Me

Yeah the SYBEX book that WGU has for Project+ is terrible.

Every paragraph basically goes like this

"PMBOK says this ..............., but its not actually true in the real world and so basically you have to make it up as you go and hope it works or else youll get fired"

and no, im not kidding. Thats almost exactly how the book reads.

veritas_libertas

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Yeah the SYBEX book that WGU has for Project+ is terrible.

Every paragraph basically goes like this

"PMBOK says this ..............., but its not actually true in the real world and so basically you have to make it up as you go and hope it works or else youll get fired"

and no, im not kidding. Thats almost exactly how the book reads.

That is pretty much the truth. Unfortunately the Sybex book is the only resource for the Project+ that is up to date.

petedude

down77 wrote: »

themagicone: Remind your mentor that the premise behind WGU is a competency based model and not a perfect score model. Requiring a student to achieve perfect pre-assessment score could cause undue apprehension and/or anxiety for current and future courses.

The *ONLY* pre-assessment that I took as a WGU undergrad, aside from the required math/english intake assessments, was the LPO1 - leadership and professionalism 12cu course that has since turned into the management and organizational behavior courses that many of you are taking now.

This post has been rolling around in my head a few days, so I should jot down my thoughts and get on with studying.

IMHO, it's reasonable for a mentor to expect 80%. I think 3 "grades" for your credits are more justifiable if you perform at that level-- after all, if a 3 is supposed to be equal to a B grade, shouldn't you be clearing the 80% mark?

Following along with that, I think pre-assessments are a good idea as it's easier to extract an 80+ percent grade from the preassessment than it is for the actual certification exam.

Now, in favor of any argument stemming from the 90%-mandated student, the pre-assessments shouldn't be showing passed if an 80% score is preferred. They should be geared for 80%+ percent pass scores. That's something WGU can and should fix if they really want to make the 3's stick.

earweed

True you should be clearing 80% for a B. With some of the assessments we take though, like project+ with a 599 passing score, it's really hard to get that nailed down. WGU keeps their costs down which makes them affordable by doing very little actual student monitoring. The only thing WGU actually knows we are really doing is passing the final exam and that is not even required to be at a B level. If they found some way to record our grades on the assessments vice just a pass or fail then they would have a GPA type system.
Right now for the IT classes they are using exam force to measure if you're ready for the assessment and most mentors don't even require that. It's in every COS to do 3 "passes" of exam force 75%, 85%, and 95% yet some students aren't required to do this. My mentor is one of those who require it.
I feel that I deserve the right to say I have a B for every class as I've approached most of my classes as if they were B & M type classes and I've followed the COS WGU has made out for the class. A lot of them have a lot of extra work in them which most people, if just studying for a cert test would not do. For the Sec+ class, for example, I worked through 3 different books (Comptia book, sybex book, and sybex street smarts book) and feel I learned a lot by doing it that way. I probably took a lot longer than I should have to finish my Sec+ but even if my grade (855) were all that determined my GPA portion for that class it would be at least a B.

Edit: Didn't follow the COS as closely for the Net+ class but made an 865 on that test. I didn't do all the "required" work of the COS yet I got a better score on the final. I skimmed through a lot of the reading and skipped some altogether. I had access to Labsim and the Mike Meyers video and these put together were sufficient.
At a B&M you're required to do certain things throughout the course of a class. Here it's "recommended"

killuah72

Hi I'm thinking about taking the Bachelors Degree in IT Network Administration at WGU. If I complete the certifications that are listed on their website, will I be able to transfer those certs and get credit for them? I'm thinking about clearing as much credits as I can before I enroll because I heard you can't transfer any more certs after you enroll. Can I also transfer CLEPs?

Thanks in advance.

themagicone

I have come to dislike something very very much WGU, and it is getting me upset like crazy. Well actually 2 thing, but first is their damn using of taskstream to score work. Taskstream has to be to most unuseful piece of #### ever. You ether pass or you don't, they might give you a comment "problem with citation", but you know what? I have almost 50-100 citations in my paper, it becomes a game of do I change this or change that, is this right or was it right to begin with. If they returned my work with a note in the paper on where to look for the mistake it would work better, but nope just "does not meet standards, requires revision". Currently I'm working on task 1 of the research paper, I've turned it in 4 times now - I've lost track of what I've changed, not knowing if what I changed was what was wrong or not.

That brings in the 2nd thing I have come to dislike and that is APA. I can understand APA in the sense of a format for citations and references but APA goes beyond that in the sense it states what kind of words you can use, the tense, the tone, etc of how you write. I can write, but trying to conform to APA format has to be the hardest thing I've ever done. It doesn't feel natural to me. I can't wait until I'm done with the English classes.

thomAZ

Just passed my science test today (INC1)! It was one of the hardest test I've ever taken just because of the amount of information covered. I'm pretty pumped that's four classes down!

earweed

@themagicone you really need to get with the course mentor or one of the on-line tutors if you're having that many problems. They were very helpful to me when doing my research paper. Is Alice Stefaniak (sp?) still one of the mentors? She was really helpful.