I first began working on C212 on October 5th. Just as with the previous course I did not complete a Kanban chart to organize my progression through the course material. Because WGU provides a progression tracking tool and due to the speed with which I move through chapters, I no longer see much value in creating my own Kanban board to track this. The WGU tool is very simple and amounts to checking off a to-do list. Each Competency activity has two possible check boxes as seen below (grey icons). The circle is for completion as shown in the blue circle at the bottom of the screenshot. The square with the arrow is a ‘Skip’ icon. Obviously you can check this if you skip the material.
I don’t bother taking the time to select the Skip button. I generally select the check marks for completion. I found I was spending, maybe, 30 minutes setting up a Kanban board for a class. In the same time I could cover an entire competency activity such as reviewing the flashcards and summary for a chapter of a textbook. In the case of the Marketing course the Performance Assessment was a Global Strategic Marketing Plan and I found most of the concepts generally familiar based on reading through the assessment requirements.
The hardest part of this course for me was deciding what type of company and specific products to cover. At first I thought it was an obvious choice to cover my current employer under a pseudonym. After reading through all the instructions I could find in the Course of Study and Course Tips I found a very useful guideline in the FAQ of the Course of Study at-a-glance Document. It stated that the products did not have to be in fact new. This is a direct contradiction to the instructions detailed on two other documents and the grading rubric which indicated “new products” must be selected. For those not keeping track the instructions on how to complete this task could be found on four different documents. Providing multiple sets of instructions in various formats is a bit confusing. The requirements were in sync and once I identified that my products did not have to be new inventions I no longer worried that my entire paper would be rejected based on product choice. As a parent I’ve had experience with a specific type of product and had various ideas for it which I won’t detail here. During this brainstorming I wrote down brief answers for each of the Task requirements for parenting-related products vs my employer offerings. Because my employer offerings could be viewed as more scientific I realized I would have an easier time relating to and writing about the parent-related products. Over three non-consecutive days and 6.4 hours I wrote the entire paper. I referred back to the textbook only to review key words and concepts to guide the language and focus of my paper. I completed at least one Marketing course during my undergrad and found many of the concepts at least familiar. An interesting insight was the time I spent discussing a number of concepts that were drilled during the Economics course I completed last month. The pricing and global market discussions were especially helpful from the prior course.
I submitted my paper in Taskstream and the two day wait made me more anxious than usual. Some of the instructions for this Task were somewhat vague and the rubric used words like sufficiently or substantially supported. Nowhere in the instructions were these phrases defined beyond the basic requirements. Therefore I was relieved to pass on the first attempt having apparently satisfied any subjective interpretations of the grader. The paper allowed for fairly significant creative license which helped me because I consider myself a naturally creative person. Also, my current job and someone I work with has given me numerous insights into the nature of wholesalers and global supply chains. Both of these concepts were heavily featured in my paper and my work experience basically wrote those sections for me. Again, this is where competency based education shines. My work experience counts for as much as my educational experience. Traditional education would require I sit through numerous protracted lectures on concepts with which I have personal experience. Even in my undergrad I found it humorous the number of business professors that had all academic and no practical business experience. My work experience gives me more meaningful and memorable learnings than any amount of textbook reading.
I spent a total of 15 hours on the class with almost 7 hours classified as study time in my homemade time tracker. I submitted the paper on October 15th and that’s the day I received credit for completion of the course despite not receiving my results until the 17th. I did spend some time reading for the next course while waiting on the paper to be graded. So if you count completion as the 15th I completed the entire course in 11 days compared to my revised target of 7 days. Again, the family requirements continue to be much greater than I expected in October and that is largely driven by the simple yet powerful effect of moving the two kids in to share a room. The younger child was clearly not ready to share a room and the sleep deprivation is affecting everything. I’ve had to spend more time watching kids and cleaning and going to activities than I expected by far. Nineteen days into October and I’m averaging less than 1.5 hours per day of work on my MBA. WGU recommends 20 hours per week minimum and I was hoping to do more than that. Therefore I’m putting in half the recommended hours per week this month so far. I’m using vacation time from work this week which will significantly raise my hours per week. I’m optimistic and expect to significantly accelerate my progress.
I’m a CPA and the next course is C213 Accounting for Decision Makers. Because I have significant work experience in public accounting, internal audit, consolidations, and finance, I chose to take the pre-assessment course the first day I was enrolled. That just happens to be today. I sent an email to my new mentor at lunch time and was enrolled before leaving work today. After lying next to my child and trying to set an example of falling asleep for nearly an hour I started to feel frustrated that I was spending so much time lately on everything but school. I certainly discussed the time requirements and set expectations for study hours with my spouse before starting the program. Because the kids were moved into the same room while I was at work one day I feel like this constraint was unnecessarily thrust upon me. Hence, my frustration. So at 9 p.m. I marched from the side of the still not sleeping child to my computer where I logged on and started my Accounting pre-test. I finished the remaining Dryer’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup ice cream while completing the first 17 questions. I know, it’s pretty wild for late on a Monday night but I thought I deserved it. I finished the test in 80 minutes and scored 89% on the 69 questions. I’m not sure how much I can or should say about the test, but the course devotes an entire section to Activity Based Costing and I question how valuable this is for most people in an MBA program. As a CPA I never use the details of this concept to the extent covered in the material. I shouldn’t complain when I actually need to look something up for a course I’m studying, but I’m being critical here as this is one subject where I’m rather qualified to have an opinion.
At any rate, I passed the test well above the required pass rate and immediately requested to schedule the Objective Assessment which will complete the course for me. Tomorrow I start my vacation that runs through the beginning of next week. I’m hoping to complete three courses by the time I return to work. Those courses are Accounting, Ethics, and Finance, all subjects with which I have both academic and professional experience in abundance. It’s now after midnight and I’ve spent more time journaling than working on courses today. How is that for full disclosure?