Documenting My Son's WGU Experience

[theonlyski]

Best of luck to him!

If I've done my math correctly, I should have between 30 and 36 hours once enrolled, so this should be very enlightening.

I got my eval back with the same Cisco certifications you have listed, they cleared out 29 CUs, so add in your general ed and you should be pretty well past 50 CUs.

[Thorne]

I got my eval back with the same Cisco certifications you have listed, they cleared out 29 CUs, so add in your general ed and you should be pretty well past 50 CUs.

With two AAS degrees in IT plus the certs, I should clear (almost) all of the LL requirements PLUS the remaining Cisco certs. That leaves me with 9 courses @ roughly 35 credits. If they place me at anything less than 70 or so, I may have to reconsider.

[Thorne]

Rowan, did your son finish the Spreadsheets course yet? Even if not, what is his impression of the course thus far?

[rowan555]

Rowan, did your son finish the Spreadsheets course yet? Even if not, what is his impression of the course thus far?

He's about 2/5 through it - he's struggling and hating every moment of it - he has zero Excel experience, and it's showing. He's scaled back to doing a tiny bit of it a day and focusing on Workforce Planning. He's taking that pre-assessment tomorrow, so as he waits for the objective assessment to happen, he'll spend some more time trying to get through Spreadsheets. He said the course is designed well, he just isn't enjoying it personally.

[jessikalauren]

I'm following a WGU subreddit and there are tons of posts about Spreadsheets. It seems many have trouble with this one.

[rowan555]

I'm following a WGU subreddit and there are tons of posts about Spreadsheets. It seems many have trouble with this one.

I'll tell him to check it out. He'll be glad to know it's not just him. He knows he needs to just suck it up and get it done, but I think it's making him feel more confident to just knock out some of the upper level classes and work a little bit a day on Spreadsheets. He just had Task 1 accepted for Workforce Planning - 4 days in the queue so it was a relief not to have to resubmit it. He's at #87 in the queue for task 2 and I'm confident it will be accepted as well. He's taking the pre-assessment right now and just yelled to me from the other room that it sucks.

[Thorne]

He's about 2/5 through it - he's struggling and hating every moment of it - he has zero Excel experience, and it's showing. He's scaled back to doing a tiny bit of it a day and focusing on Workforce Planning. He's taking that pre-assessment tomorrow, so as he waits for the objective assessment to happen, he'll spend some more time trying to get through Spreadsheets. He said the course is designed well, he just isn't enjoying it personally.

Ouch. I have got enough Excel experience to make an inventory sheet, so I'm starting at the same place he did. One guy I spoke with said that the pre-assessment and the objective assessment are very similar, with only the numbers being changed, but I'm not certain if I buy that.

[rowan555]

Ouch. I have got enough Excel experience to make an inventory sheet, so I'm starting at the same place he did. One guy I spoke with said that the pre-assessment and the objective assessment are very similar, with only the numbers being changed, but I'm not certain if I buy that.

I'll be sure to share his thoughts and experiences with both assessments. He's just terrified right now because he thinks it's going to be really hard and he's going to bomb it. He just passed the pre-assessment for Workforce Planning today, so once he knocks out the objective assessment I'm going to really push him to spend the rest of the week on Spreadsheets and get it over with.

Update to WGU's Scoring Policy - they no longer have cut scores, which my son is not happy about. They now have a little "meter" for each content area and you have to reach mastery in each content area to pass the pre-assessment. This is a brand new change, so I don't know much about it. I know when he took his pre-assessments earlier in the month he had a score and they wanted it to be 15 points above the cut score to unlock the final - now all of that is gone, and they want you to meet the "mastery" line on each content area bar in order to unlock the final.

[rowan555]

I thought I'd include some details regarding the non-transferable courses in HR Management. I'll add more as he begins additional classes.

Spreadsheets is a skills-based course in which the pre-assessment and final assessment involve completing a series of complex spreadsheets. The final assessment is the only graded item.

Workforce Planning: Recruitment and Selection includes two tasks, with the second building on the first. The first task is 5-10 pages in a sort of outline format, and the second is 3-5 pages but requires a bit more paragraph writing than the first task. The objective assessment has 34 questions.

[teacher2]

I'll be sure to share his thoughts and experiences with both assessments. He's just terrified right now because he thinks it's going to be really hard and he's going to bomb it. He just passed the pre-assessment for Workforce Planning today, so once he knocks out the objective assessment I'm going to really push him to spend the rest of the week on Spreadsheets and get it over with.

Update to WGU's Scoring Policy - they no longer have cut scores, which my son is not happy about. They now have a little "meter" for each content area and you have to reach mastery in each content area to pass the pre-assessment. This is a brand new change, so I don't know much about it. I know when he took his pre-assessments earlier in the month he had a score and they wanted it to be 15 points above the cut score to unlock the final - now all of that is gone, and they want you to meet the "mastery" line on each content area bar in order to unlock the final.

I just looked this up and apparently WGU is applying this change to all except the Teachers College.