This morning I awoke to find that my student mentor had responded to my email from last night and enabled me to schedule my Objective Assessment. I scheduled the test this morning and took it at 1 p.m. Because the actual initiation time through Examity seems to always take 15 minutes or more, I began testing around 1:20 p.m. I passed the exam 65 minutes later with a 92%, an improvement over the pre-test time and score.
Let me step back a moment to highlight something. Yesterday I sent an email asking to be enrolled in the course. I officially enrolled in the course closer to 5 p.m. Monday evening. I completed the course before 3 p.m. In less than 24 hours I completed an entire course for my MBA. I don’t expect to accomplish that feat again, but it bears noting that this is nigh impossible in traditional education. Here, I’m already an expert in accounting as supported by my results. Completing the objective assessment demonstrated competency and the course is complete. Time required to complete is irrelevant as it should be. When you need a doctor to perform surgery or a pilot to fly a plane, you don’t care how long it took them to learn the necessary skills, only that they are sufficiently competent in the necessary discipline to deliver a successful outcome.
The Objective Assessment was more challenging than the pre-assessment and delved into some fairly obscure details. I won’t give specifics here as I’m sure that violates some policy somewhere. I’ll just say that it was the most challenging exam I’ve taken in the MBA so far and only my prior expertise allowed me to fly through it. Someone who had not studied these concepts before would likely find themselves slowed down in the program at this point. I did spend a little under 2 hours this morning reviewing some of the concepts I noted from the pre-test that would be good to review. Some of the review was very helpful and some of it wasn’t worth the time spent in relation to passing today’s exam. Since I scheduled my exam for 1 p.m. due to different family obligations, I had time to review this morning. You might ask why I didn’t just take the test in the morning if I felt so confident. The traditional student in me wanted to earn an ‘A’ on the final, which I did. Even as I sing praises for competency based education I still hold to societal constructs regarding education. If it’s hard for me to break habits formed over two decades of traditional schooling it must be far more challenging for society to break habits formed over more than a century. OK. Enough of the soapbox. The materials I reviewed seemed to present the material as simply as could be with a good tone from the author and video instructor. I don’t remember my accounting textbooks being quite so easy to follow or get to the point. The online text did a good job of summarizing and emphasizing key points. Perhaps textbook authoring has simply improved since I graduated last. Most of the online texts have been better organized than I remember the undergrad texts. Granted, that could be my own bias and fallible memory at work. If someone did not have prior accounting exposure I think the available exercises would be insufficient to prepare for the exams. Given my prior expertise and having not read most of the text, I will understand if you discount my next opinion. After completing the exam and considering the material I did read, I have doubts as to whether a single pass over the material would be sufficient to get someone through the exam. Some of the concepts required a deeper understanding to correctly answer. However, a required grade of 66% to pass may allow someone with less developed understanding to still pass and continue on. This is not a limitation exclusive to this model of learning as many people graduate and earn degrees with C-averages in traditional programs.
Another thought I had today is completely separate from the most recent course. It would be fun to get paid to pass my way through an unfamiliar degree as fast as I can. What I mean is to have six months where I don’t go to a day job but instead earn an entire degree. Whether this has any real value to justify getting paid or to provide me with value by earning such an extra degree are different questions indeed.
Over half way through the MBA and here is what my degree plan looks like for progress completed in Term 1.
I think I’ll graduate well before the expected date. I’ll be done before February of 2016 at this pace. The remaining courses are currently presented in my Degree Plan as follows. I’m not sure what the point of the straggler term was, but maybe WGU has a reason.
