C455 English Composition and Task Stream

C455, English Composition I, was my first experience with PAs (Performance Assessments) using WGU's Task Stream.  Task Stream is the system by which a student uploads papers and presentations to a queue to be graded.  It's a simple browse to select your file or drag and drop, you can leave a kind note for the reviewer, and hit submit.  If a paper, it gives you an "originality score", which is structured backwards in my opinion.  My papers have all received an originality score of 0%, which means they are completely original.  Logically, I would think they would be 100%.  Oddly, the score directly equates to what percentage of your paper is unoriginal.

Once submitted, it's a waiting game.  Your submission status starts out as "submitted", then moves to "in queue" quite quickly.  They have 72 hours to complete the grading of your submission.  The next status is "In Evaluation", followed by "Evaluation Done".  If you've signed up for them, the system will give you an automated message on the student portal, text message and email once your evaluation is complete.  Within 72 hours you'll know if you passed or if your item was kicked back to you for revision.  I've not needed revisions to work yet, but as I understand, they will let you know what you are lacking.  I'll likely need revisions to something at some point in the next 2 years.  It's not a big deal, make your changes, review with a course instructor or writing lab, and resubmit.

I hate writing for the sake of writing.  I like writing when I'm actually learning something or have something to say (clearly, LOL).  Across my entire college career this is my 4th attempt at this class.  Not because I'm not capable, but because life always got in my way.  I hate English Comp 101, it is my collegiate nemesis.

For C455, for IT majors, I strongly recommend attending the corresponding cohort (live interactive webinar) for IT majors.  The instructor breaks down exactly what is needed and in what format for each of the 4 papers including how many paragraphs and how many sentences in each paragraph, how to structure your thesis statements and paper formatting.  I used the APA guide included in the course material to confirm my reference page citations.  I also used the formatting video provided in the course to be sure my papers were formatted correctly, title page, headers, indents, etc.  Aside from these formatting checks, I did not use the course material at all.

If you're unsure about anything, the course instructors are wonderful.  Set up an appointment with one of them or shoot them an email.  They are happy to review your thesis, and even glance at your paper to help with proper citations and general flow.  I had one formal meeting with my course instructor, I put my paper in Google Docs, and shared it to her, we reviewed it live together.  I received 2 impromptu follow up calls from course instructors offering to be of assistance.  If you need in depth tutoring, the writing lab team is supposed to be extremely helpful as well.

As of the publishing date/time of this post, I have completed the first 2 tasks and submitted a third which is currently "in queue".  I am working on the fourth and final task for the course at the moment.  Wish me luck!

C480 Network+, Thank Goodness It's Over!

There are 2 courses I've dreaded most in my first year at WGU, this is the first one.  Dreaded for it's complexity, depth of knowledge and for the fact that I resent having to take this class.  I feel that networking, cabling, wireless and security were all covered extensively enough in Intro to IT, A+ Certification and Network and Security Foundations for my major.  This class is excessive and the stress level induced is torturous!

March 3rd, the day I passed C172, I took the pre-assessment for C480, and scored a respectable (in my mind) 67%.  After that I struggled to work through the videos provided in the course, and other resources.  So boring, so not what I wanted to spend my time doing, I really don't like this subject matter.  I can't tell you how many videos I fell asleep watching, or drooped off mid scroll through seemingly endless network diagrams.  This was a struggle that got me nowhere over a period of 2.5 months, yes I said months.

May 23rd, I attempted the pre-test again.  75% <insert head banging on wall>

Aside from the fact that I hate this class, why couldn't I get this stuff stuck in my head?!  My weak spots were definitely OSI, subnetting, cable specifications, IP routing, command line and troubleshooting.  There was no time to waste, my exam date was set for May 30th a week away, and I needed to make measurable strides in this course.

On May 25th, I spent 5 hours on subnetting, I reviewed several "quick" methods online, but most of them seemed to rely on doing a brain dump of a table as soon as your test started.  I knew there was going to be so much going on in my brain, that wasn't a good add on.  I worked on subnetting until it clicked in my brain, and then did oodles of practice questions to make sure I had it down.  I am happy to report I can answer most subnetting questions in less than 45 seconds with no table or calculator!  This website is a wonderful subnetting quiz resource:  https://www.subnetting.net/Subnetting.aspx?mode=practice

Studying via test question worked last time, so I went through all the quizzes again and another practice test.  I completed all of the labs (which I hadn't done previously).  On May 26th, I took a practice test that while part of the course work, was provided by another vendor, I did awful, 64%!  I found there to be many more troubleshooting and concept related questions rather than technical regurgitation questions.

My stress ramped up a ton!  4 days til my test and I was clearly not grasping these concepts.  I went to the WGU College of IT Facebook group and asked my peers, "how am I ever going to get this done?"  Someone gave me great advice that fit in the same vein as my "study via test question" approach.  He said there was a mastery mode built into the course, I did not know this, so I dug a little and found it.  It asks you every test/quiz question and many of the labs built into the course, 3 times.  Yes, 3 times.  If it asks you once and you get it correct, great, it will still ask you 2 more times, if you get one of those wrong, you start over at 0.  And it goes on that way until you get all of the questions correct.  I was sure to read all of the explanations when I got a question wrong, and even those I got right, to help make the concepts stick.  I think there are 598 questions total.  It took me 3 days to complete it all, many many hours.

On the morning of May 30th, I took one final practice test, the official post-assessment, and scored a 96%.  I was still plenty nervous, but I felt like this would be ok.  If not, I had another month in my term to try again, but I was sure hoping I wouldn't need a second chance.  I arrived early at the test center (the local community college).  Anticipating that I would need the whole 90 min and no breaks allowed, I used the restroom and then checked in for my test.

It did take me the whole 90 minutes, but I passed with room to spare.  I felt like having subnetting down saved me in about 6 questions, and there were several troubleshooting scenario questions.  There were 79 questions on my test.  The score is out of a possible 900, with 720 being the passing score.  I scored 780!  I had a good cry, followed by a steak dinner with my family, followed by a blizzard and a quiet bubble bath.  Network+ was the highest tech certification achieved by my father in his tech career, so he was a proud dad.

 I am now CompTIA A+ and Net+ certified and a CIOS specialist.  Bummer that you have to recert every 3 years.  I'll have to look into the logistics of that.  The last CompTIA certification required by my program is Project+.  I'm not positive yet what term I'll tackle that one. 

C172 Network and Security Foundations - Passed!

I started studying for C172 in mid January after completing C168.  Network and Security Foundations takes all the basic knowledge from Intro to IT and A+, focuses on the network, infrastructure/cabling, and security components but dives deeper.

I began with the pre-assessment built into the course material and scored an abysmal 50% on the nose.  One of the great things about the WGU courses is that the pre-assessment tells you exactly where you went wrong, so you can focus your studying efforts and save time.  I admit, I was discouraged, and didn't look at the course for about 5 weeks (I did get some English Comp papers done though).  Then I resigned myself to getting this class done.  After spending almost 2 weeks reading through my weaker chapters (I'm looking at YOU cable specifications and subnetting), I took another crack at the pre-assessment and had improved to only 72%.  This was not good news.

I had a feeling that maybe some of my answers weren't completely wrong, but either that the text wanted a specific answer (when other answers are satisfactory), or I was really overthinking things.  I adopted the strategy of learning from test questions.  For the next 24 hours I drilled through test questions, reviewing each one, even if I got them correct, to solidify them in my brain.  The next day I took the post-assessment, which is the test that should be used as a gauge for final exam readiness, and I got a 99%.  Just to be on the safe side, I went back and reviewed all of the chapter quizzes for my weaker topics.

The next day, I took the OA and passed!  Based on how the practice test was graded, I probably missed 1 in networking concepts, and 2-4 in the other 2 categories.  Not bad!  It is helpful to know where my weak areas still lie, since my next course is C480 Network+ certification.