Monday, August 15, 2016

Second Semester Recap (2/7 completed)

This semester was strange: I passed two classes right away, relocated to Singapore for 3 months and passed one course while I was gone and spent a lot of time not finishing my fourth. I returned back to the US, finally passed that fourth class, then in the last month of my semester, finished another two classes. If I had to make a guess, I'd say I only spent 4 of the 6 months actually active/studying.

Network and Security - Foundations – C172
I took the pre-assessment for this course and scored 15% higher than the cut score, so I scheduled the exam the following day and passed the exam with a score 1% higher than my pre-assessment. 10 years of information security and 20+ years of being a full-blown computer nerd helped with the knowledge required here.

Operating Systems I – C697
I started studying for this course before my semester even started, as I wanted to pass it quickly. However, this class was much, much more difficult than I expected it would be. The OS I and II courses are designed to have you pass the CompTia Linux+ certification exams (there are two), and assumed that having casually used linux for the last 10ish years would have given me a significant advantage here (mostly personal server stuff, nothing professionally). I was wrong.

First, there's a lot of Fedora-based questions, which I had to learn entirely as I've generally experimented with Debian-derived linux flavors. Second, the study/testing third-party materials provided by default from WGU was through uCertify -- which was 100% reading, flashcards, and quizzes. This isn't itself a problem (though I did have some issues, explained below), but after I felt extremely confident with the material through uCertify, having completed all the coursework, I wrote the exam at a local testing center... and failed. Barely, but still failed.

I felt like there was a LOT on the exam that wasn't covered by uCertify at all. Because they don't let you take failed exam questions home (standard practice for most certification exams, so you cannot build a key of questions/answers), I can't verify this completely. This was an especially problematic failure for me, as I was going out of the country for three months a week later. I received an email from one of the course mentors with a link to the LabSim material for the Linux+ exam -- this was the same content engine used for the A+ certification. Not only did LabSim provide audio/video material, it also covered topics that seemed missing from the uCertify material.

Not wanting to figure out the logistics involved with trying to take this exam out of country (if it was even possible), I spent the next week cramming the LabSim material when I should have been doing pre-three-month-trip things. Thankfully, my partner (who was coming with me) was able to achieve a lot of these tasks, so I'm super thankful she was willing to help. My second attempt was eight days later, which I passed, and flew to Singapore the following day.

Scripting and Programming - Foundations – C173
I was conflicted with this class: part of me wanted to develop my Python skills beyond what I've already got, but part of me wanted to finish the course as soon as possible to move on. Even with a fairly low cut score, I was able to score 18% higher on the pre-assessment. I spent maybe three hours on course material before I said "screw it," and schedule the exam. Passed with a score 1% lower than what I scored on the pre-assessment. While my knowledge of python syntax comes and goes, the fundamentals of programming are still embedded within, I suppose.

Critical Thinking and Logic – C168
I passed the pre-assessment on this course with the minimum score required to take the exam (that is, 10% above the cut score), but I chose to take the course instead of immediately scheduling the exam. This was due to a combination of desire to learn more within this course, and not feeling terribly confident while taking the pre-assessment.

Unfortunately, I hit a barrier in this class in that the content of the chapters of the reading didn't manage to hook me at all. I ended up reading through part of the section through Systematic Problem solving, where various personal and work trips put a squeeze on the amount of time I had to study. Factor in my apathy for the course, and I ended up essentially with no progress on this course through the entire month of May.

After returning to the states, I read through the section on Assumptions, Biases, and Fallacies and couldn't really force myself to continue past that, so I went ahead and took a second pre-assessment: 7% higher than my previous score, which was good enough for me! I wrote the exam and ended up with a score 11% higher than my first pre-assessment score (and 21% higher than the cut score), so I was happy with that.

Organizational Behavior and Leadership – C484 & Principles of Management – C483
Having been employed at a large corporation for the last 10 years, I scored sufficiently high enough on the pre-assessments to take and pass both exams. While I did well in C483, I was just able to squeak by in C484 with its very low cut score. This is good, because I feel if I had to study this particular class, I'd end up falling into the same "demotivational" spiral as I had with C168.

Up for next semester: OS II (to actually acquire the Linux+ cert), Networks (for the Network+ cert), and Integrated Natural Science. I was told by my student mentor that the former is easier than the OS I course, and the latter isn't terribly complicated and I believe mentioned it was almost like a high-school level understanding of natural sciences. I really hope this is true, because if I'm able to complete an additional seven credits at this point, I can bump my graduation up a whole semester (assuming the minimum 12-14 credits per term), ending two years from the end of this month. Hooray!

Thursday, April 21, 2016

A+, Network+, Security+

29/124 CU's

So, I guess I have been falling behind with my blog posts. Instead of making a separate post for all 4 classes, I am going to roll them all into this one.

Since the A+ certification can be split into 2 tests, the classes are split into 2 different classes, IT Foundations and IT Applications. When you pass the first part of the A+ you submit your scores to WGU and then you start working on the second part. The coursework at WGU for the A+ was fine, however I found that watching and understanding the Professor Messer A+ series of videos was more than sufficient for passing the A+ exam. I was planning on using both the WGU material and the Professor Messer videos, but I ended up just using the videos at ProfessorMesser.com. I took the first part of the A+ test and passed with a pretty decent score.

Then it was time to move on to IT Applications, I stuck with the videos as my primary study method, however WGU has practice simulations that proved to be very helpful with the exam. I took the final part of the A+ test after about three weeks of study and again, passed without issue.

The Network+ certification is the goal of the Networks class. Professor Messer again proved to be an invaluable resource for the material, I also used Google to learn all the definitions that I was supposed to know for the test. The Network+ test only uses acronyms, so learning what they all mean is very important in understanding what they are asking you. I studied for three to four weeks and went and took the Network+ exam, and passed, though my scores were not as high as I would have liked them to be. But hey, a pass is a pass right?

Network and Security Applications was my next class up. The Security+ certification is the goal for this class. Since I am a Security Engineer for my day job, I didn't really feel the need to study for this one and the test proved to be a breeze. If you are not already doing security for a job, I would recommend Professor Messer again as a great source of information for this test. I was only a few questions away from getting a perfect score for the Security+ exam.

I think I am going to knock out a few non certification classes before going for more certs. Part of the reason for this is that I am starting a new job and I want to settle into that to regiment before worrying about more certification tests. Another part of the reason is because there seem to be quite a few classes that I should be able to knock out without much issue. The Python and the Java classes shouldn't take too long to take care of, as well as some "gimme" classes, such as the Intro to Management class. To be honest, most of the classes, including the ones that come with certs seem like they will be fairly easy for me due to the experience that I already have with the topics. The only ones that I am anticipating to be tough is the CCNA classes and the CCNA Security class. Hopefully I remember to update the blog posts more frequently in the future.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Semester One: Complete

One semester down, 6 (or less) to go!

Introduction to IT - C182

The first class I took and "tested out of." Many schools will do a series of entry tests that allow you to place into higher levels of classes, but WGU doesn't. Fear not, WGU's system is a little different, you enroll in a class and take the pre-assessment. If you score high enough, the instructor will approve you to go ahead and take the exam. If you pass, you're done with the class. Credit earned. It's a pretty sweet setup, because this applies to nearly every class at WGU.

That said, this is what happened for C182 for me: I scored an 83% on the pre-assessment (enough to schedule the exam), used the pre-assessment coaching report to quickly brush up on areas that I was weak (n-tier architectures, different styles of software development, etc), and passed the exam.

Education Without Boundaries Orientation - ORA1

What I assume to be a standard orientation class, with a focus on preparing the student for doing distance learning. Sample exercises included writing down a weekly schedule to include a certain number of hours worth of classwork, to ensure students are prepared for the amount of classwor that's actually involved. My very first semester out of High School many years ago, I took something like 18 credits worth of classes and was immediately overwhelmed, so my assumption is this is to try and help students avoid a pitfall that's easy to make when there's no set classroom schedule.

IT Foundations - C393 + IT Applications - C394

I lumped these together because they're both essentially prep classes for the A+ exam. Yeah, I laughed too, thinking "I've been using computers, in a very technical way, for over 20 years now, this should be a breeze!"

It was not. Thankfully, I still had a strong grasp on a lot of what was covered, but there were plenty of things that, thanks to computers and BIOSs being the extremely simple plug'n'play things they've been for the past decade have eroded a lot of the knowledge I had about things like IDE master/slave configurations, SCSI terminations, etc. Thankfully for me, the exams were a bit behind the technology curve, so there wasn't anything beyond Windows 7 on the exam, as I still haven't touched 8/8.1 or 10.

As this is a "cert" class (versus just a WGU core class), the pre-assessment/exam setup is a little different. Instead of using the WGU pre-assessment or learning materials, you use a third-party certification education company for all but the exam, which of course is delivered by the certification body and examination performed within a testing center.

For these two classes, TestOut/LabSim is the vendor used for the education portion of this class. The way I approached the classes was to take the end-of-section quiz, and if I scored at least an 85-90%, I'd consider that I've already got a decent enough grasp on the literature and moved onto the next section. The bar for requesting a certification voucher is higher with classes that result in a certification, so there was a minimum amount of coursework that needed to be completed with a sufficient score before the voucher was granted (in this case, the 4 "domain exams" and post-assessment exam for each course).

The one thing I can say about these two classes is that you should definitely take them back-to-back, as the material from C393 compliments that from C394, and vice versa.

Additional notes:

While I managed to finish these four classes with plenty of time still left in the semester (which are 6 months long), previous work and personal travel obligations rendered me unable to take additional courses. I did, however, start studying the material for C697 - Operating Systems I, which I passed within the first week of starting my second semster, and have completed another two courses within the first three weeks of my second semester.. but that's for another post!

Update 27-Jun-16: added class #'s as tags to make finding notes about specific classes easier for readers of the blog.