My Background and Starting With WGU Experience

I've been working on my associates degree for a little more than a decade now. I graduated High School in 2000, immediately starting Community College with no direction, little discipline, and too much ambition. Unfortunately, the whole "you don't *have* to go to class" combined with far too many credits lead to a poor few first semesters, and eventually I stopped taking classes. In 2008, I restarted at the same college, taking their online classes 6-7 credits at a time, which worked very well, but slowly.

It was by chance that I saw a tweet from mubix about his first semester at WGU that lead me into looking into WGU. I discovered a few people I knew were also starting (and a coworker who was finishing his masters), so I decided to go ahead and sign up. I partially want a degree just to tick that box (and to encourage higher education in children/young adults in my family), but also because at this point it will open "management" doors, for the future. I figure at some point I'm not going to be able to keep my tech razor sharp and up to date forever (we're not all DaKahuna), so I'm not hurting myself by finally finishing my degree.

The two main selling points for WGU were competency-based vs time-.based learning, and the generous credit transfer system that let me utilize both certs I've recently acquired and old community college credits (for classes that I didn't particularly want to repeat -- I'm looking at you, Database Fundamentals). The latter allowed me to transfer 33 credits (26% of the way to graduation already!), and the former will allow me to speed through the tech and security classes.

The enrollment procedure was quick and painless, thanks to my Enrollment Counselor, John C. I was then handed off to my mentor, Oraib Z, who has been super helpful. Initially, I thought the weekly schedule call with her was going to be unnecessary, but I find even the "nothing to report" calls helpful, primarily because it allows me to ask the little questions where I would normally not want to bother someone about.

My only complaints thus far have been technology related, and very minor:

• The VoIP system the staff uses, presumably to mask their home numbers, tends to have enough latency to make conversation difficult.
• The my.wgu.edu logon seems to be unusually slow, as the site itself seems plenty fast after authentication.
• On day I was to have my first scheduled at-home exam, their system was having issues and I had to reschedule the next day (and it worked without issue).

Finally, one of the larger concerns I have was discovered while traveling internationally. One of the courses used a third-party provider (TestOut LabSim for C393 and C394), which provided video-only based learning materials and didn't seem to have any non-US content delivery in place. Despite having amazing local internet speeds, the video content would take a minute to buffer to play 3 seconds of video. I realize this is a U.S. school, but as a 100% online school geared to working professionals, not including those who may road warrior outside of the US is a little disappointing.

I'll get to my "semester review" post once my first semester is completed next month. So far, so good!

End of Term 2 - 33/122

So, this is the end of my second term with WGU and I have missed out on completing a class. English Comp 1. Unless I can finish all 4 tasks before tomorrow night it will show up as Failed on my term list.

The other classes in this term were Intro to IT, which was a relatively easy, College Mathematics and Elements of Effective Communication.

Tips:

College Mathematics: I had to buy a new calculator, one without the "solve()" function. I bought the TI-83 and it should serve me well in my other math classes. But you can pass this class with a very basic calculator, it's all about remembering the formulas.

Elements of Effective Communication: The test is pretty straight forward, make sure you watch the videos so that you can get the vocabulary right but a lot of the test is commonsense. The presentation portion is actually pretty cool how they do it, you write up a short paper about your presentation first. It is something I will probably be doing for all of my presentations going forward. Just remember to cite your sources, and for the presentation put your full sources in text to go along with your video and you should be good to go.

Humanities, Literature and Arts 80/137

Hey all!

This class is one of the ones I have dreaded. The general education requirements for any degree. I don't like them at all. That being said it took me 6 weeks to do work that if I had actually sat down and just done it would have taken about two weeks.

For this class I had to write an essay and do a PowerPoint. For this essay, I had to analyze two pieces of art work and explain how the time period they were from influenced the later time period. This took about 1 week to look up information and write the paper. Although I say a week it was sporadically. Who wants to do home work on a Saturday when you can go to the beach! I submitted the paper and had it sent back needed revisions to meet the requirements. Once they were made the essay was accepted and I moved on to the PowePoint.

The PowerPoint is not like a standard presentation. The way they want it done is like writing an essay but putting the information on the slides. You have to choose three works, one literary and two non literary and relate them to your profession and/or degree. I choose Invictus but William Henry as my literary work, the movie BlackHat as my first non literary and The Grid - Crystal Method Remix as my third work. Once you have your works they want you to analyze them and explain the elements that are used in each of the works. After your inital review they want you to explain how this relates to your job and field of study. I did so and submited and again had a few changes that needed to be made.

The good thing about the way these are graded is that once you submit if there are changes they tell you exactly what you need to do, then resubmit and be done.


This was not a fun class for me at all. I prefer the technical classes that I can use for my job. That being said on to Scripting and Programming Foundations! Ill let you all know when I finish!

Thanks for Reading!

Eag1e3y3.

Introduction to IT

CU: 013 out of 122

So I just finished my first class, Introduction to IT. It was a fairly easy class, just going over the basics of the various functions of the IT space. I started off taking the pre-assessment before I looked at any of the material, which is suggested by WGU. The cut off score, or the score required to pass, was 65. My first attempt I received a score of 76. After taking the pre-assessment you get a “coaching guide” that tells you how you did on each sections, and with this guide you know which sections to study up on. When I had my 1 on 1 with my student mentor she said that she already cleared me to take the final assessment, which when passed allows you to get your credits for the class and move on to a different class. I still hadn’t received my WGU student kit yet, so I did not have my WGU issued webcam that is necessary to take the final assessment for class, so I was stuck waiting. While waiting I continued to study on different sections that could help raise my score. There were some issues with me getting my WGU student kit and so it took a couple of weeks for me to finally get the webcam. As soon as I got the camera I scheduled my test for the next day. The pre-assessment ended up being a great guide on what to study and how the final assessment was setup. 

So the way they do their testing is to connect with Citrix GoToMeeting, you share your screen and you have to have their webcam setup so they can see both your face, and the screen on your monitor. The proctor also had me give them a 360 degree view of my workspace so they knew everything that was around me. They also had me show a government issued ID. This whole process took about 10 minutes and then I was able to start my test. You are given 3 hours to complete this test and I was able to finish it in about 20 minutes. I passed the class no problem and am now starting the 1st of 2 A+ certification classes. I am taking next week off from school though, work is sending me to training for a week, so I guess I will actually start working on that class next weekend. 

Intro to my time at WGU. 78/126

Hello,  I will start by introducing myself. My name is Chris and I work as an Information Security Administrator in Northern New York. I'm married and have 2 wild boys that keep me going all day long. I had tried online schools before, and they weren't for me. Then I started looking again about 1.5 years ago and found WGU.  There were a couple of things that attracted me to WGU. One being that the cost of attendance was less then any other school I looked at. The second and main deciding factor was that I would earn industry standard certifications and my BS all at once for the same cost! 

I started the trek through school one and a half years ago. It had been a long time since I completed a semester, by long time I mean 2008 when I graduated with my A.A.S in Computer Information Systems. This time I was determined that I would finish and earn my BS. I was actually very lucky during the enrollment process and acceptance. I transferred in 44 CU's, pretty much covering all but 3 general education courses!

I have completed 78/126 CU's in 3 semesters including transfer credits. Most of the classes were the intro IT courses so I was able to move through then with general ease, having worked in IT for a while. Just recently I started getting into the harder more advanced classes. At first I didn't need to put in the full 20 hours a week they recommend. This past semester proved I needed to put more time in. I had to take a couple second attempts on finals.

My 4th semester starts on June 1st. I will be taking my final general education course! The down side it requires me to write a paper. The up side is that the other courses are Networks, a scripting course and application development course.

I am going to try and write a post after each course and update my CU's as they are completed. Hope this can help others in their journey!

- Chris(Eag1e3y3)

Getting Started at WGU

CU: 009 out of 122

First, let me start by introducing myself, friends call me Thomas, I am a network security engineer at a bank in New England. Army veteran and father of 4. I have tried college a few times but never seem to finish. Life gets in the way, I need to make money, not be in class all day, etc… Anyways, I have heard some great things about WGU. Their class format is designed for someone like me who tends to get bored after I know the material and just wants the class to end. Their cost of attendance is really great also, less than $3K every 6 months at the time of this post. This includes most, if not all, of your materials, as well as any certifications that I need to get along the way!
   
I just got accepted a couple weeks ago, this was a fairly painless process and mostly typical of any college you apply to. You apply, send in transcripts and in my case, supply a work history, similar to a resume. WGU has a pretty high graduation rate and they want to make sure you can do the coursework before they admit you.
   
My first day of class will be on June 1st. I have already done orientation, which went over how the classes are structured, how to go about taking the exam to finish each class, setup my school e-mail and designed a study plan. At some point in the next few days they will assign me a student mentor, who is responsible for helping me stay on track and help design my degree plan. The beauty of WGU is that you only do 1 class at a time, and tuition is only due every 6 months. You are required to complete a minimum of 12 “competency units” every term (6 months) but you are free to complete as many as you can in that time frame with no extra fees. At the top of each of my posts I will keep track of how many "CU's" I have, as well as how many I have left.
   
I plan on writing posts after knocking out each class I have to do. I only had 3 classes that were eligible for transfer, but luckily English Comp I was one of them, that means I only have 1 English writing class to knock out! w00t!

End of Semester 1

CU: 023 of 122

 I finally got through this:

• 4 IT Foundations - C393 - O
• 0 Education Without Boundaries Orientation - ORA1 - P
• 4 IT Applications - C394 - O
• 4 Integrated Natural Science - INC1 - O

I know I haven't posted here in a while, but I blame that on you all for not complaining at me. Definitely not my fault ;-)

Anyways, C393 and C394 were pretty easy. They were just studying for the 2 part (hence the two classes) test for the A+ certification. I say they were easy probably because I spent most of my "formative years" building desktop machines and trouble shooting everything for networks to printers and back again. I will say, as most have, that the printer portions are the hardest to remember and get right on the test.

ORA1 was just Orientation and done as soon as I started. An easy zero credit class ;-)

Integrated Natural Science though put my resolve to the test. It's A LOT of fact remembering and understanding. Most of the notes I've found online say that the normal time to complete this course is 10 weeks at WGU. I definitely went over that time, but lucky for me the other two classes (A+) I had baked in less than a month.

One thing to note about INC1 is that the pre-test does not align to the final test. Some of my studying was very specifically aligned to making sure I could pass the pretest and I only remember one question that was at all similar on the final test. But, the quiz questions for each module did include the questions for both the final and pre-test so study those often.

That's it for Semester 1. Next up is:

• Introduction to IT - C182 O
• Foundations of College Mathematics - C457 O
• Elements of Effective Communication - C132 PO
• English Composition I - C455 P

I've looked through the content of C182 (Into to IT) and think I can jam that pretty quick. I love math so I think I'll be able to pick that up quickly as well. The C132 (Elements of Effective Communication) I think will be tough. The final exam is a presentation, as well as a written. As I have given multiple presentations I don't fear that part, but the written might be lots of memorization (not my strongest suit). Then English Comp I dread...


Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon!