I earned an MBA in under 300 hours, here's how:

I set out on a quest to obtain an MBA as efficiently as I could. This is the story of how that endeavor unfolded. In a period of five months I added an MBA to my resume and changed the level of jobs for which I could apply. This is a fully accredited degree and an evolution in education. The old rules of the antiquated education system are being overturned. Competency based learning is a higher form of education. Would you like to finish school and get on with work and life? Here's a solution I highly recommend and a true Pareto type solution. I've received 100% of the benefits of an MBA on my resume and spent far less money and time than traditional students. The posts are in reverse chronological order, so to start at the beginning you'll have to scroll a bit.

Bonus: Summary of how I passed each course directly below

C200 – Managing Organizations and Leading People

Resources used: prior experience, public records, sections of textbook “Management”, an article “The Eight Major Theories of Leadership”, management book from personal collection, dictionary, Task templates for papers, grading rubrics

Time spent (in hours): planning 6, study 7, performance assessment 25.5, total 38.5

Approach: Planning consisted of reading Task instructions. This was my starting point in approaching the course. I read an article I found on the WGU site about 15 steps to accelerate the program. Conversations with my student mentor, goal setting, and formulation of my approach filled the rest of the time.

My study time began by listening to chapter 15 of Management. The online textbook can read to you. Speed up the computer narrator to save your tired eyes and keep up momentum. Less than two hours of study went in to reviewing SWOT definitions and chapter 8 of the text. I also reviewed a personal management book to obtain a relevant quote and a specific behavioral leadership theory suggested by the course mentor.

I started drafting the required papers as I covered the relevant material. I dropped over 2 hours into rewriting sections of Task 1 as I changed the company I was focusing on after drafting a portion of the paper. Some of the time recorded as working on the performance assessment included reviews of material to support the writing.

C211 – Global Economics for Managers

Resources used: prior experience, textbooks “Global Business” and “Principles of Economics”, Kanban board

Time spent (in hours): planning 1, study 19, assessment 1.5, total 21

Approach:

Planning – revised target completion timelines; Kanban board setup (online tool used to track learning progress); reviewed Pre-Assessment results

Study – read or listened to most of the chapters from both textbooks; reviewed all flashcards and vocabulary; attempted some homework problems only to feel they required a large amount of time to finish without adding significantly to my understanding (never bothered with textbook homework again)

Assessment – I spent almost twice as much time on the pre-assessment as the actual Objective Assessment

C202 – Managing Human Capital

Resources used: prior experience, textbook “Human Resources Management”, Kanban board

Time spent (in hours): planning 1, study 13, assessment 1.4, total 15.5

Approach:

Planning – Kanban board setup

Study – scanned most chapters of textbook for vocabulary, key concepts, and diagrams; completed some multiple choice sample quizzes; summary side notes in chapters made for efficient consumption of concepts; used pre-assessment coaching report to focus review prior to Objective Assessment

Assessment – multiple choice tests

C204 – Management Communication

Resources used: prior experience, textbook, grading rubric

Time spent (in hours): planning 2, study 0, assessment 12, total 14

Approach:

Planning – reviewed task requirements, considered most efficient approach, discussed some questions with student mentor

Study – None! I recorded no time for study on this course. I make PowerPoint presentations and send communications at work every day. I’ve been studying this topic for years.

Assessment – As this was a Performance Assessment I completed a PowerPoint presentation and a number of business communications. I referenced the textbook to include some theory in part of the Task 2 responses.  I also referred to the six elements of informal proposals to set the framework for my persuasive letter.  Other than that I basically ignored the vast majority of resources included in MindTap or the Course of Study.

C212 – Marketing

Resources used: textbook “Marketing”, C212 Frequently Asked Questions, grading rubric

Time spent (in hours): planning 1.5, study 7, assessment 6, total 15

Approach:

Planning – read Task requirements, brainstormed products and approaches to Task

Study – reviewed the vocabulary and summary for most of the chapters in the textbook; watched a couple of the videos and read a couple suggested articles because they seemed interesting to me beyond fulfilling the requirements of the assessment

Assessment – completed a marketing plan based on my planning and study

C213 – Accounting for Decision Makers

Resources used: textbook “Accounting for MBAs”

Time spent (in hours): planning 0, study 2, assessment 2, total 4

Approach:

Planning – none, I’m a CPA

Study – reviewed some key concepts in chapters 6, 9, and 11 while waiting for the grading results on the prior course and reviewed specific concepts after the pre-assessment

Assessment – This Objective Assessment was a multiple-choice test. I completed 69 questions in 65 minutes with a score of 92%

C206 – Ethical Leadership

Resources used: textbook “Managing Business Ethics”, C206 pacing guide, grading rubric, suggested articles, C206 concept summary, Self-Check Questions

Time spent (in hours): planning .5, study 17, assessment 15, total 32

Approach:

Planning – review of task requirements, pacing guide, and rubric

Study – Read the textbook and skimmed where I could. The formatting of the textbook was HORRIBLE. This added hours to my total study time. A summary of laws and regulations that came in the course documents online helped speed up some study and was far more helpful than the textbook. Self-Check Questions were very helpful for studying concepts in a quiz format but such references weren’t available for all the material.

Assessment – This course required two papers for the Performance Assessment and a multiple-choice test for the Objective Assessment. Almost 12 hours went to the papers. I failed the first pre-test by 1%. The second pre-test I passed with a 90% (well above the required passing score). I completed the Objective Assessment in 46 minutes with a similar score. I received an award for one of the papers indicating exemplary work. This means I spent too much time on that piece of the course if efficiency was my prime objective.

C214 – Financial Management

Resources used: HP 12c Platinum (financial calculator), textbook

Time spent (in hours): planning 0, study 11, assessment 2, total 13

Approach:

Planning – none, this is my day job

Study – I took the pre-test cold to assess my capability against the material and passed easily on the first attempt. I used the coaching report and key concept notes I took during the pre-test to focus my review. The biggest learning was the need to obtain a financial calculator. Seriously! This test had far more calculations than any other test in the MBA to this point. The right calculator made some questions quite easy. Without it, manual calculation is brutal and a waste of mental resources and time. Also, this course covers a broad set of financial concepts in detail. If you don’t have familiarity with these concepts previously, add a lot more time to your study expectations.

Assessment – Objective Assessment, 93 minutes to complete 69 questions far above the required passing score. Get a financial calculator and learn how to do the required calculations.

C207 – Data-Driven Decision Making

Resources used: textbook “Data-Driven Decision Making”, flashcards

Time spent (in hours): planning .5, study 14, assessment 14, total 28

Approach:

Planning – reviewed Task details and templates

Study – Because I was expecting math and calculations as part of this statistics course, I reviewed the modules into which the course was divided and completed review quizzes for most of the sections. I also reviewed vocabulary and flashcards that were part of the course materials online.

Assessment – Objective Assessment, 49 minutes for score of 87% on 70 question test with time limit of 2 hours. For the Performance Assessments plotting the course of attack and the appropriate techniques for analysis are critical to quick completion. Task 2 was completely dependent on the Task 1 submission. It was almost necessary to begin with Task 2 in mind to plan Task 1 and complete both in a way that was consistent and appropriate for the selected analytical techniques.

C215 – Operations Management

Resources used: textbook “Operations Management”

Time spent (in hours): planning 0, study 12, assessment 3, total 15

Approach:

Planning – one multiple-choice test to pass and three days to do it

Study – I reviewed chapters 5 and 6 for glossary terms, tables, and key concepts. I reviewed the vocabulary for the other chapters of the text.

Assessment – Objective Assessment, 42 minutes to complete 70 questions with a score of 78%. I did calculate how many questions I could miss and still pass. When I got to the end of the test and saw I marked few enough questions for review that I was almost assured a pass I confidently submitted for grading.

C216 – MBA Capstone

Resources used: CapSim – online resource

Time spent (in hours): planning 5.5, study 23, assessment 48, total 78

Approach:

Planning – Tons of pre-work and configuration to get up and running for the CapSim and following tasks. Some of this time also went to coordinating with teammates.

Study – reading related to CapSim and numerous team meetings where we practiced for the competition rounds

Assessment – CapSim competition rounds and reports with team were handled through team negotiations. One team member had GoToMeeting which made everything easier. We took the advice to spend most of our time in practice to make the competition rounds go fast. For the tasks I limited the client interaction to the most efficient minimum, batching questions and using email when appropriate.

Final official results

After all official results came through, here’s what my student dashboard told me once I finished all work for my MBA!

Final submissions!

Shame on me.  I had to resubmit both of the last two tasks.  Aarrgh.  I just resubmitted Task 5 and I’m confident it will pass.  I had an oversight of not explaining one small point even though all the necessary detail was there in my PowerPoint.  All I had to do was say the right words.  I guess that’s what I get for not putting presenter notes in to remind myself to cover the topic in the way required by the rubric.  Task 4 was sent back because they wanted more specifics around my recommendation.  Oh well.  I tried.

Interface update for submissions

Submitting Task 4, here’s the new button that used to say Taskstream is now just powered by them.

Capstone progress and the value of communication

My Capsim team met for over three hours last week from Tuesday through Saturday. We took Sunday off and then met Monday for another three hours. Last Saturday we decided to back off our Niche Cost Leader strategy and tried out the Broad Cost Leader strategy. We ran through Round 4 and scored in the 98th percentile. We scheduled our debrief call for today and parted ways until Monday. On Monday the Finance manager could not meet so the rest of the team completed rounds 5 through 8 without him. We learned a number of valuable insights and completed the practice simulation with an overall percentile score of 94. We even absorbed some hits to our scorecard during the last four rounds and scored well. I documented a number of those key learnings in a document on the team shared drive. In our phone call tonight, the Capsim Debrief, we gathered a number of helpful hints and tips. We also asked some very specific questions and received some great answers. Again, those were documented in the meeting notes I’ve kept in the team shared drive. Our team is now armed with a strategy that is practiced precisely through Round 8 and a solid page of notes and ideas to guide us in decision making through the Capsim competition rounds. Honestly, I’m excited about it and think we could score in the top ten percentile and thus receive the top performance award. I hope my confidence is not misplaced due to the number of times we hit undo and reworked our practice rounds. Every time we hit undo and tried something new, we learned valuable lessons about the simulation and the relationships between the different parts of the company. Also, spending more than 20 hours last week as a team talking it out was a very productive learning method. We kicked ideas around very quickly and then tested them.  We failed quickly and moved on to learn and succeed. At the end of every practice session I felt more informed, prepared, and positive about the experience. I will concede that our Friday night session started later and ended well after midnight. As a team we agreed that this was a bad strategy and the time became less productive due to exhaustion. Even then, we learned some important things for the team and our company. This week other than our Monday night session and the debrief, we have had much less team time. I’ve used the time to push anything forward that I can. Last night I stayed up until midnight completing the PowerPoint template for the team to use for our Capsim presentation. I also completed the Assignment Designation Form that is necessary for everyone to submit as part of Task 2. By the end of the night I had delivered updated meeting notes, a required form, and a substantial Ppt template with multiple emails to the team that will help speed us to the end. Tonight, after the debrief, emails were exchanged that made it clear we won’t make any team progress until at least Monday. With three days between now and then I do not want to simply wait. One guy has family stuff all day Saturday. One guy informed us that he’s in the hospital until Monday. What? Is he ok? I have no idea and I really hope he is. Since that is completely personal for him I won’t even ask why or whether it’s an emergency. I’m assuming that if he can email then he is reasonably ok. We have to meet on Monday and complete the simulation to meet the two week timeline we agreed on in our first meeting. I’m disappointed to lose the entire weekend, but I have a backup plan.

My dad got back to me and confirmed that I can use the company he works at for my Capstone business review. This will give me easy, quick, and complete access to all the details. I won’t have to deal with trust issues in dealing with a stranger and I already know a fair amount about the business because I worked there for a few months many years ago and grew up with the business owners’ kids. However, as a family business, it is ripe for identifying problem statements and making suggestions. These are two key points required in the final paper of this MBA. The Task 4 requirements provided a very good Word template for the paper. All I have to do is get the content from my dad, do the analysis, and fill in the paper. I’ve already proven I can string words together at length. My dad has already provided some solid ideas around the problem statement. I’m confident I can get the info I need and write this paper to substantial completion this weekend if my family permits.

Speaking of family permission, I’ve run into another obstacle. I know I previously wrote about finally arranging my schedule to finish the MBA and negotiated for no interruptions. Guess what? My spouse’s family decided to schedule a three day gathering next weekend. It is all I could do to keep my mouth shut. I did everything I was supposed to do to communicate the need to finish this degree and obtain uninterrupted time until the end of the program to hammer this out. Nobody negotiated or apologized to me for stepping over the boundaries I communicated and agreed on. One day I was simply told that I was expected to give up three days and take time off work in the heat of the Capstone. I haven’t decided yet how to address this. It’s interesting that no matter what I choose to do about this, I lose. Either I don’t meet my goals and keep to the plans I set, or I catch a ton of grief from family who showed no respect for my prior-arranged plans. This is interesting because managers do this stuff all the time. They show up and slam some huge request down on you without regard for any of the plans or arrangements already in place. In both cases, the impacted individual may have done everything they were supposed to do to align expectations. It is wrong of the other party to suddenly change expectations without communicating or helping ease the burden. But should the impacted individual fail to do what the family or boss want, they WILL be punished. Whether it is work, life, or school I’ve learned much about a key component to solving this conundrum. Communication. Communication is essential and it seems the impacted party is the one that must always take the higher path and initiate the hard conversations.

Team meeting and Capsim beginning

We had another team meeting tonight, 8 – 11 p.m. It was productive and mostly efficient. It is easier to get to task and remind the team of what is next when an agenda is provided with the meeting invite.  In last night’s meeting I volunteered to be the taskmaster keeping the team on topic during meetings.  I did a bit of that tonight and felt that I was pushing progress forward without being too pushy.  I’m mindful of the peer evaluations that will be completed and hope that I’m striking the right balance as a team member.  At the end of the meeting one of the team members asked what we had learned tonight. I said I would take a stab at it. Let me see now if I can remember or reprise here what we learned. 

We learned how to navigate and operate the Capsim application and each of the four main departments. We learned that we should make the decisions for how to complete each department as a team. We also learned how we make decisions as a team.  We learned about the relationships between the departments, our decisions, and the scoring.  The simulation is easier to learn by jumping to the decision making and completing the department numbers. This approach provides focus and relevance which improve comprehension and retention.

We spent the first hour on R&D after which everyone needed a 5-minute break. Then we spent another 45 minutes on Marketing. We hurried through Production and Finance to see how our Round 1 decisions would work out. We scored 63% which is above the required passing rate. Our leverage score was perfect and our company had a $7m loss. OK, we have some work to do. We were able to agree quickly on the Niche Cost Leader approach based upon one industrious team member’s readings of other successful teams. Based on preliminary results we can at least pass with our current strategy and maybe we’ll even hone our skills to reach the top results. After the second meeting I will say everyone is competent and one of the people was much sharper tonight than last night. We decided everyone needs to take some time tomorrow to do some reading and learning on their roles. We will reconvene late Friday night for one hour to attempt a true completion of practice Round 1.

1st team meeting

Tonight I participated in the first team meeting for my Capstone course.  I was very happy with the participation.  For a first meeting I’m excited about the people on the team as they all seem competent and prepared to contribute.  Everyone voiced their desire to complete the Capsim in two weeks.  Even though our first call ran long at just under 3 hours, everyone was in good spirits the entire time.  We covered the following agenda quite well.

- Meet and greet/introductions
- Form Company
- Situation analysis
- Strategies
- Determine member roles
- Set/determine meeting cadence/timelines
- Draft team contract
- Other
- Meeting Wrap-up

Home screen update

Update to the Home screen.  They changed the formatting.

Courses complete, enrolling in Capstone

Big milestone today!  I just passed the Objective Assessment for C215 Operations Management and completed the course.  The MBA Capstone is the only course remaining to complete my MBA.  I sent my mentor an email already asking to be enrolled for the January 4, 2016 start date.  Apparently it must be completed with a team so the start dates are pre-determined. 

I recognize there’s a slight gap in the journal here.  I passed the previous course C207 Data-Driven Decision Making officially on December 20th.  I had to rewrite an entire section of Task 2.  However the grading continues to be fast and when I woke up the next morning I received the good news that I had finished the course.  Thus I enrolled in C215 Operations Management immediately and accelerated my studying.  My completion time is three days for this course.  Because I was told I must complete all courses prior to the Capstone by today to join the January 4th group I’ve been plowing all the time I could spare into this course.  I finished the Objective Assessment for C215 in 42 minutes and scored a 78%.  During the test I bookmarked 23 questions for review.  Because I did my math prior I knew I could miss as many as 29 questions and still pass.  I mark every question I have a hint of doubt about my answer choice in order to get a good estimate of my worst possible score on the test.  When I reach the end and see that statistically speaking I’ve almost certainly passed the test it lets me click submit without hesitation.  This is an interesting moment to evaluate how bad I am at guessing on multiple-choice tests.  I bookmarked 23 questions and missed 15 questions on the test.  If theoretically I had no clue what the answer was, I correctly guessed only 8 out of 23 answers.  A 35% guessing rate definitely will not get me through any of these tests.  Thus by how bad a guesser I am I can further substantiate the competency I’ve demonstrated in this program! 

I found a number of the test questions to be phrased more difficult than the pre-assessment or the chapter review quizzes in the book.  I’m not sure I agree that simply making the wording of questions and answer choices more complex and confusing is a valid test of the competency of the subject matter.  Changing the wording from that given in the text may test mastery but it could just as easily play to biases in the different context people give to different words.  One question referred to variability of job scope and depending on how I read the question I could argue the answer would be either job enlargement or job rotation.  Change in scope is associated with job enlargement.  Variation of duties may imply a rotation for the employee.  If they were testing whether I understood either one of these concepts, making a question unclear as to the focus doesn’t allow me to show that I know what both concepts mean.  These critiques are perhaps overly critical as even 5-10 questions of such ambiguity would not prevent one from passing the exam and therefore demonstrating the required competency for the course.  In my case I’m ecstatic to have completed this and all the other courses since September. 

To pass this course I took notes during the pre-assessment and read all the textbook chapters.  I completed all the chapter review quizzes.  I also printed off a WGU custom glossary included in the online text and studied each chapter’s vocabulary at the time of reading.  Considering I did all this in a period of three days means I wasn’t stopping to ponder on a lot of topics.  I found my level of familiarity with many of the concepts to be higher than anticipated.  Also, I found the concepts to be more intuitive to me and many things felt like common sense.  I’m not sure whether this is a personal observation or a commentary on the subject.  It made me consider whether moving into more operational roles would be a better career fit for me than the previous accounting and finance experience.  Because of the quick completion and objective assessment I don’t know that I can say much more about passing the class.  Again, I ignored all the additional readings and videos included with the course.  My approach is efficiency to demonstrate competency.  If I don’t need something to demonstrate competency I’ve left it out and my progress to date would give more credibility to my approach.

For the sake of a status update, here are some screen shots from my WGU account.

Approaching the end of the 4th month of my term, I’ve completed 30 CU’s or 88% of the MBA.  The 0/2 Terms indicator requires explaining.  The indicator is driven by the number of terms scheduled in the Degree Plan.  Earlier in the program my mentor had courses scheduled across three terms in my plan.  This also correlates with the Planned Graduation date of AUG 2016.  I’m assuming that once my mentor enrolls me in the MBA Capstone both of these indicators will update.  When the indicator shows 0/1 Terms that might be an even more confusing statement. 

I still have 9 weeks to complete the Capstone and plan on finishing in the month of January.  Here’s to hoping work doesn’t interfere too much with my plan.  There are 11 flags there and the 0 is the CU for the Orientation course at the start of the program.  Otherwise 10 x 3 gives the 30 CU’s earned to date.  I’m not sure whether this is supposed to be a motivating factor.  The flags are shaped a bit like ribbons on medals.  Is that WGU placing ribbons of accomplishment on my Degree Plan?  Suffice it to say WGU has thought of nearly every dashboard indicator that a student could want to review their program progress.  One more indicator below shows a type of timeline.  This is also where the indicator appears when the mentor modifies the degree plan.  I’ll have to see whether I end up on Plan H once the Capstone is added.  It is a close indicator of the number of times my degree plan has changed.

Above you can see my Term 1 courses with all progress indicators included and course completion dates.  This comes from the same picture cropped to remove all the empty space in between.  Nothing is modified or missing.  I’m not trying to pull a fast one on anybody, just improving the presentation and readability.  The circles tell what type of assessment was required to pass each course.  P = Performance Assessment and O = Objective Assessment.  Some courses required both.  Before you question the commitment or rigorous nature of this program, just consider how much knowledge each of these represents.  It requires a lot of commitment, determination, and of course knowledge to pass that many tests and write that many papers in the time indicated on top of full-time work.  It’s not impossible or even soul-crushing, but it is something I will now defend with pride. 

One course left and the biggest of them all based on Competency Units.  If it doesn’t show, I’m very excited about this.  The end is now in sight.

Later in the day.

Received 2 emails, one a system notice…

and the other from my student mentor.

When I opened my WGU home page I found only one change.

Good, I was hoping to graduate a little faster.

MBA Capstone initiated.  Here’s Plan AA set up by my student mentor. 

The MBA Capstone in the Degree Plan now has dates attached to it.

Here’s what appears when I click on Plan AA.

Also…

The final course moves from Term 2 to Term 1.  This of course is the same change every time a course was accelerated and moved into Term 1.  Note that the dates on C216 have changed again.  This reflects the actual dates discussed with my mentor for completion.  I check the box to verify enrollment and the ENROLL button is activated.

I select ENROLL and away… we… GO!

I can’t turn back now that it’s official.  The entire program is finally shown in Term 1.  In fact, Term 2 has disappeared entirely from the Degree Plan.

It would probably be sloppy to leave Term 2 sitting there looking empty and sad.

Back on my WGU Home screen I get another update that is more exciting to see than I anticipated.

Planned graduation is now January 2016 and I have my grammatically incorrect but accurate status of 0/1 Terms complete.  That should say 0 of 1 Term, right?  At the end of February that will finally read 1/1 Terms, still grammatically incorrect but very fulfilling nonetheless.  At the bottom of my WGU account it also now shows this.

I also noticed a bar on the Degree Plan page just above the listing of the courses.

0+0+30=30.  Yes, it’s been a solid term so far.  With everyone locked down I can move into the MBA Capstone pre-work.  Yes, they have pre-work.  I’ll take the next couple days off to enjoy Christmas and family and then it will be back to school for one last push.  Just in time I received another email confirming all this enrolling has succeeded.

Recycling templates makes writing faster

So it turns out that C207 Data-Driven Decision Making has a lot fewer statistics than I expected.  The Objective Assessment was required first for the course and because I was expecting more calculations and statistics in the course material.  The textbook for this course was smaller than many others so I completed the reading and Assessment in about 9 days.  I would have done it faster but I had to deal with other stuff the last two weekends which reduced my study time significantly.  This week during my student mentor call I discussed what it would take to start the MBA Capstone in January.  I was informed on Thursday that I must finish the current course and the next by December 23rd to be allowed to join the January 4th start of the Capstone course.  Otherwise I’ll have to wait until January 19th.  I’m expecting some CRAZY stuff to go down in February at work so January has to be my month to finish the Capstone.  On Thursday I hadn’t started the Tasks for C207 yet.  So Friday (yesterday) I completed and submitted Task 1.  By some miracle it was graded by that night.  I had to do some rewriting though because I didn’t detail my specific sample size.  This incidentally is my first rewrite of the entire MBA program.  It’s a bit comical because the Task gives a template to draft a proposal for the paper that is written for Task 2.  It turned out to be a good thing it was returned to me because it prompted me to do the analysis on my data and plan how I would approach Task 2 in more detail.  I changed the analysis technique I planned on using after I tried graphing my data.  It turned out my first choice would not really work with the data set I had obtained.  I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. to finish and resubmit my Task 1.  This was fortuitous because my submission was again graded faster than usual by 7 p.m. tonight.  I was free to work on my Task 2 paper.  I’d already created a rough draft because the Task 1 template and my late night analysis provided so much of the content of the paper.  I spent a total of 3 hours today writing the paper and submitting it.  I received an Originality Report of 9% indicating that my paper is very original.  In other words, the computer says I really did write it all myself.  Because so much of the content is based on what was already approved, I feel confident about this Task.  I double checked APA format.  I used spelling and grammar check.  I reread the entire paper.  Yep, if I have to do any rewrites on this Task I’ll start to suspect the world has turned against me.  Certainly all the other papers I’ve written in the MBA program so far have helped me be more efficient in my paper writing.  It also helps that I keep reusing the last paper as the template for the next.  That ensures my format and structure are in line with APA format and expected guidelines. In fact, I’m so eager to meet the deadlines for the Capstone that while waiting for Task 1 to complete grading today I covered a chapter from the next course, C215 Operations Management.  I was happy to see a chapter on Quality that had strong overlap with the Quality modules in C207.  Because I have lots of time next week thanks to the Christmas holiday I fully expect I can complete C215 by Wednesday, December 23rd, which is four days from now.  As long as my paper for Task 2 passes without rewrites and is graded by Monday night I think I can pull this off.  I wish I had not been slowed down so much in October and November because these types of timelines are less desirable.  But I have to work with what is in front of me and this makes for an exciting story too.  Good luck to me!

Expectations for C207 Data-Driven Decision Making

My next course is C207 Data-Driven Decision Making.  I previously thought this would be something like a financial modeling course.  Or perhaps it would use some of the accounting, economics, and finance concepts in practice.  While neither of those ideas may yet prove false, the course is Statistics.  Why this didn’t jump to mind for me, I don’t know.  Now it seems so obvious that an MBA would have a course in Statistics.  Thankfully I had a very good teacher all those years ago in college undergrad.  Yes, that was a while ago.  But I’ve been working with numbers since then and feel confident in my ability to handle this concept as quickly as the rest.  I’ve cleared my scheduling with the family through the end of February or the completion of my MBA, whichever comes first.  Therefore I plan to finish this course in a total of 18 days.  My company gives a week shutdown for Christmas and I want to use that time to finish the next course.  That would let me complete two more courses this month and return me to my old form of three courses in a month.  That would also give me plenty of time to complete the capstone.  I’m guessing it will be easier to get into a group that starts the beginning of January than it would to find a team mid-month.  I may be wrong but I don’t want to risk it.  C207 has a 70 question test that is done first.  Then two performance assessments follow which apply concepts learned during study for the objective assessment.  The tasks don’t look too time-consuming or as involved as some of the previous papers I’ve written.  Anything under five pages in APA format is not heavy writing.  One task is a decision template and the other a report.  I’m guessing once I pass the exam and am familiar with the required concepts I could, with some internal fortitude, complete both tasks in two nights during the week.  I’m hoping work is easy this month with upper management deciding the year is over and using up vacation days.  I’ll have to see how that plays out but currently I’m optimistic because I’m not being asked for projects the way I was last December.  If work stays light and I get the time to dedicate myself on a daily basis I will definitely move through this course quickly.  If I’m lucky I’ll get to use all those cool statistics functions included in my new calculator! 

C214 Financial Management

Today I completed the Objective Assessment for C214 Financial Management and consequently the course.  Again, the course took much longer than I had hoped or planned.  Of course, since having my tonsils removed during the 21 days enrolled in the course I should probably not be too hard on myself.  Whatever is said about the debilitating pain of the procedure that you may have heard is probably true.  This mixed with the completion time of the previous course put me far behind my earlier hopes and estimates on program completion.  Based on earlier timing I should have finished four courses in the time I finished the last two.  But, I must stop myself and recall my conversation with my student mentor this past week.  He was still blown away with the speed I’m progressing through the MBA.  Even my completion of Financial Management in 21 days was to him a fast completion time.  He literally commented that the ‘intelligence’ was not a problem for me on any of the courses and now that I’m getting my time management back under control I can accelerate again.  That’s a very loose paraphrase but I’ve captured the gist of his analysis.  I had a talk with my spouse about all the distractions and how I’ve been accommodating all the family demands.  But the end of the term is coming and if I don’t finish by February it will cost another $3,300 for essentially one or two courses.  My student mentor told me the fastest I could complete the capstone course would be four weeks due to team and course constraints.  That puts me in the mind that I need to finish the next two courses this month.  In light of that I’ve already started reading on the next course, Data-Driven Decision Making which interpreted means Statistics.  Before I get far into that let me stop and give a recap on the prior course.

Financial Management is my day job.  Literally, I’m a finance manager for a large public company.  Because of that I felt almost as confident taking the pre-test cold as I did for the Accounting course.  I took the pre-assessment on November 28th and passed with a 73%.  I took notes during the assessment to direct my subsequent study.  This, I noticed, has been a very effective strategy for accelerating through this program.  I’ll note any concept around which I feel fuzzy or wasn’t expecting such detail to revisit.  This helps me also mentally give importance to and memorize what I’m reading.  This is part of learning how you learn.  I’ve learned that my mind doesn’t care about information until it knows what is useful.  Knowing something is highly likely to be on a test has a perceptible impact on my ability to read, comprehend, and memorize.  Also, since one of my primary goals in this program is to complete it in a single term, anything that speeds up my progress contributes to that goal.  I would say there are questions that are either the same or very similar (same words different numbers) between the pre and objective assessments, but on this last test there were many questions different.  In fact, one of the concepts that was hit repeatedly near the end of the test was a concept I only skimmed over in my review.  The objective assessment had a fair mix of concepts that apply to banking, investing, accounting, and corporate finance.  Consider that statement.  Certain concepts are practically owned by those individual disciplines with very little overlap to the others.  For example, in my corporate finance job I never use present value, bond calculations, IRR, or any tax considerations.  In fact my co-worker deals with cash flows for our team and he never considers the statement of cash flows or the types of cash flow in his job.  Someone in personal investing probably never uses capital budgeting concepts, yet they were definitely hit in detail on the test.  What I’m trying to convey is that this course covers a much more broad set of topics and does so in substantial detail.  If one had not previously learned these concepts I could see him spending a significant amount of time getting comfortable with the concepts, let alone learning how to perform the calculations.  This exam of any in the WGU MBA had the most calculations.  This was something that became painfully evident to me during the pre-assessment.  Since I had not reviewed any material previously, I found myself suddenly attempting present value calculations manually with a basic calculator and the formula given in the test.  Let’s just say that is a recipe for pain and stress.  I procured a HP 12C Platinum Financial Calculator on Thursday.  This gave me two days to get familiar enough with the operation to quickly crunch my way through the test on Saturday.  I used a HP 48G graphing calculator all through high school and college so I was already familiar and comfortable with the Reverse Polish Notation that these calculators are known for.  Having a financial calculator for this course is not optional.  If you know how to use the tool and understand the present value and bond yield/pricing questions they are almost free points.  The calculator does all the heavy lifting if you just understand how to enter the data provided in the question.  If you do not have one you will be down quite a few points on the exam wasting valuable time and brain power.  Unless you are a mathematician that gets a thrill from solving complex equations by hand, you are inviting an obscene level of needless pain on yourself by not using a financial calculator.  Even my beast of a graphing calculator was not set up to handle the NPV, IRR, or some of the bond questions.  Grab your pocket protector because I’m about to geek out on you.  With my new HP 12C in hand I started enjoying the calculations and imagining all the money I could make by understanding how to calculate bond yields and other investment calculations.  While I know the investors out there understand just how naïve that sentiment sounds it is intended to convey the stark difference the right calculator makes for this course.

Financial Management is full of complex and difficult concepts that are not intuitive.  Again, my extensive prior experience and status as a CPA put me in another playing field from the novice.  Some of the concepts are still difficult for me to memorize and I’ll flatly state that I’ve passed the test, completed the course, and still did not memorize some of the multi-step calculations for cash flow budgeting.  But if I had to I could grab a reference for any concept in this course and quickly put together the calculation or summary for professional use.  In that regard I’ve certainly demonstrated competency in this subject and did so in less than 13 hours.  That’s right.  From pre-test to the end of the objective assessment I spent a total of 769 minutes working on this course.  From one Saturday to the next I invested less than 13 hours received all 3 CU for a Masters course in Finance.  (Online learning haters go read how hard it is to pass the CPA exam and then shut up.)  My results are certainly not typical but also not indicative of a course that is watered down for older students.  This was a comprehensive and detailed exam and I put in some focused study which resulted in my passing the final with a score of 84% (well above the cut score) in 90 minutes when the exam has a time limit of 3 hours.  While my score could have been higher, the tradeoff between studying more and studying enough means I finished the course and can now move on in the program.  Other CPA’s would say just as they say for the CPA exam that anything above the required passing score means you studied too much.  How’s that for practicality!

Ethical Leadership Award

I had a medical procedure last week that left me in enough pain that I’ve done almost no school work for the last seven days.  Let’s add medical issues to the list of items that can slow you down during a degree program.  However, I’m confident in my abilities in the current course, C214 Financial Management.  Considering that’s my current job, I should be well-prepared for the course.  Once my health is up to concentrating on a pre-test I will take it to see where I stand and the type of study I may need to supplement to pass the course.  I’m hoping my results will be similar to those in the Accounting course. 

I received an email yesterday on my phone in my student account.  Considering I’ve done zero school work recently I didn’t know what to expect.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the following.

I’ve received an award for a paper I wrote.  I’ll add this to my resume for sure.  This is an interesting turn of events.  Had I known I was putting far more effort into an assignment than was expected I probably would have written less.  It was an eleven page paper in APA format that I spent less than 7 hours working on.  Even more interesting is that I thought I was merely fulfilling the requirements given in the task assignment.  I know the course was recently redesigned which makes me wonder whether the grader has only seen a few other submissions for comparison.  It would not be in the interest of WGU to hand out awards for underserving submissions.  On the other hand, lacking the ability to connect one student to the next due to the anonymity of online education, it may not hurt them to hand out awards.  If students take all these good feelings and promote WGU that only helps promote their brand to others looking to enroll.  Because I’m the recipient of an award I must dismiss such cynical views and advocate that I assuredly deserved this based on the merit of my work.  While Ethical Leadership caused me great frustration due to the presentation of the material, I’ll happily take a resume boost from it.

Ethical Leadership - important topic, terrible presentation

I finished C206 Ethical Leadership yesterday and as can be seen by the date it is long after I intended.  It took me about 25 days to get through this one course.  Why?  August and September were extremely busy at work with long hours and numerous tight deadlines.  So all the doctor appointments I would have spread out suddenly fell into the end of October when I planned to use my vacation days for school.  Add in multiple interruptions where my wife wanted me to watch kids or address something else.  One day she invited her family down for the day.  The next day I was expected to go to a pumpkin display at the Arboretum with the entire family and most of the in-laws.  In a nine day stretch where six days were vacation and two the weekend I only completed 18.8 hours of school related work.  From a planning and school progress perspective I consider this a massive failure and waste of my vacation days.  From a family and personal care perspective, I’m still glad I used the vacation days from work, spent time with my family, and took care of the medical appointments before the end of the year.  Moving forward we had a Halloween party and Halloween itself to take up several nights.  My wife successfully planned events and activities that I was required to attend every weekend from September 26th up through last weekend.  Once we were even out of town Friday through Sunday.  I’ll say most of these events came as surprises to me.  Yesterday I was able to focus mainly on school and complete the Objective Assessment and therefore the course.  Hopefully I don’t appear too big a jerk for calling out these obstacles to my progress.  I did agree with my spouse that I would be allocating significant time to my studies, averaging 20 hours per week throughout the MBA.  Since September 1st, my official term start date I’m averaging just over 11 hours per week.  Since October 1st, I’ve averaged under 11 hours per week despite the 6 days of vacation intended for school.  What is driving this decline in progress?  It could be that the heavy work demands flowing directly into school through September requiring so much of my time created stress on her in dealing with our small children when I was simply not home or around.  Comments have been made indicating a feeling that I’m not doing my part.  That could be argued strongly both directions depending on one’s interpretation of what my responsibilities should be.  Let’s just conclude this as an explanation of the life and family factors that have played into my slow-down since September. 

Ethical Leadership came with an online textbook that is brutal.  Managing Business Ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right (6th ed.) is published by Wiley and is the most unfriendly textbook to use I’ve yet encountered in this program.  It definitely ranks up there as one of my least favorite textbooks ever encountered.  The title about “straight talk” is perhaps an appropriate title.  The entire textbook reads like one long article giving frequent stories and opinions from the authors.  The search function often would not yield results that I knew were in the text.  Trying to search using words from various study questions usually did not yield relevant results.  This meant studying turned into long sessions of rereading, scanning, and searching the text.  Keywords were only italicized and the corresponding definitions sometimes were obscured within the paragraphs.  Very few tables and diagrams were included.  No bolding, concept summaries, or key point sidebars were utilized.  As a student, it was painful.  I’m a CPA and have taken numerous ethics courses and trainings over that last decade.  None of the material was difficult to comprehend.  I was already familiar with numerous detailed concepts such as most of the laws and regulations discussed in the course.  The most challenging part of this course was finding the definitions and concepts that were being tested.  Numerous concepts were easier and quicker found through a simple search online.  Many of the stories and case studies were interesting and appropriate to the material.  The writing could even be considered engaging.  However, the textbook formatting hurt the entire experience.

I wrote a nine page paper for the first task.  I started a little slow but once I came up with the examples I wanted to use the paper practically wrote itself.  I completed Task 1 in just over five hours mostly in one day.  The grading stretched completion out to four days total for completion.  The second task was a paper also and mine was eleven pages.  Some research was required but many of the details were pulled from my prior knowledge.  Three days and 6.6 hours were required to complete Task 2.  Grading stretched the completion out to 8 days for this piece.  Thus I completed the work for the Performance Assessment in a period of 10 days, 12 days with grading.

Despite reading much of the textbook beforehand and the study involved in writing the papers, I missed the cut score on my first pre-assessment by one point.  That is the first time I have not passed any exam in this program on my first try.  My first readings proved too cursory.  While reviewing after my pre-test I used the Coaching Report and notes I took during the pre-test to focus on the critical concepts.  This approach helped me refine my study.  For example, instead of memorizing a list of formal and informal systems in a culture framework I focused on the fundamental differences between the two categories and examined the questions through this lens.  By the second pretest I was so prepared I scored a 90% in 28 minutes.  The next day I finished the Objective Assessment in 46 minutes with a score of 86%.  Between the two pre-tests there was very little variation.  The Objective Assessment questions were different in the details but also fit the same conceptual patterns as the pre-tests.  Based on my last two test scores the difficulty of the pre-test and OA were well aligned. 

Overall, the subject was positive if hurt by the presentation of material.  I’m glad I’m done with this course and hope to resume a much faster pace to complete the final four courses in my program.

Enrolling in C206 Ethics Game

Today I enrolled in the next course, C206 Ethical Leadership.  I was disappointed recently when I went to look at the requirements.  Back when I first decided to enroll at WGU I set out a Timeline which included all the assessments that must be passed to complete each course.  At that time only an Objective Assessment was required for this course.  Since my first glance and my current enrollment the course expanded to include two Performance Assessment tasks in addition to the exam.  I have no explanation for this other than something my first mentor told me.  Sometimes courses are altered or updated.  Because of the rolling monthly enrollment possible for the MBA these changes occur during a student’s program.  When I first gained access to the WGU system in August I saw ‘V2’ next to a couple of the courses.  I was informed that was an indicator of what version the course was since someone started the program.  Since my September enrollment I’ve not seen any such changes in the courses in my degree plan. 

In line with earlier observations, I’ve decided not to use the Kanban board to organize my approach to this course.  WGU provides pacing guides for each course which suggest readings and assignments to complete each week.  I will use the pacing guide to follow the order of approach to chapters and readings, but complete each section far faster than the suggested week.  Currently I’m hoping to finish this course by Friday or Saturday.  Since I’ve taken vacation days from work yesterday through the beginning of next week I technically have all day to complete this acceleration.  Work has a ‘use it or lose it’ policy and I have days to burn at this point in the year.  As expected, my spouse used my vacation days as a signal that she gets a vacation so I’m left at home today watching the kids while she is out shopping.  This is another interesting wrinkle in trying to do school while working full time.  I made a point multiple times of telling her my focus was to complete school and make the progress that wasn’t happening because of all the family obligations she has scheduled the past month.  So the first thing she does after I announced my vacation was plan lunch one day with her friend, which was yesterday.  At the time she told me it would just be one thing during my vacation, just one thing.  Today, the second vacation day, she is leaving me with the kids for more than half a day.  The first half I had to go to the doctor, so my only study time is the time she leaves me with the kids.  This is not the first time I’ve had vacation days where she schedules a vacation for herself and I’m left watching kids.  Maybe the lesson to me is that I need to stop telling her when I have vacation days if I have specific plans.  When the vacation day arrives, instead of going to work, I’ll follow the plan.  That way I’ll actually accomplish what was planned.

The first assignment is to enroll in an Ethics Game.  Sounds fun.

Those are the instructions above for the following steps.

I clicked on ‘show section.’ A new window opened to show the following.

Click on ‘enroll now’ to see:

That’s a lot of window space for such a short message.  No window or other changes visibly occurred.  I checked my WGU email and absolutely nothing has changed at this point.  I’ll have to return later to see if I can access this game.  Time is wasting. 

I just discovered the intent of the Ethics Game.

1 Masters course in under 24 hours

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.

Obstacles and Progress

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?

Marketing paper submitted

I turned my paper in for C212 Marketing on Thursday night two nights ago and was 80th in the queue.  It took all the way until 10:55 p.m. tonight to finally get the results.  I passed.  I received perfect scores on the paper and positive comments all around from the grader.  I’ve been repeatedly checking for updates, anxious to find out whether I passed another course.  I’ll have to write a little tomorrow about my experience with this course since it’s now so late.  Family needs have slowed me down for weeks now.  I wanted to be done with this course a week ago.  This puts me just about half-way through the MBA. 

C212 Marketing

I just enrolled in Marketing.

C204 Task 2 passed

I received my results for C204 Task 2.  I passed with high praise from the grader.  I received the highest scores in all but three subsections.  If I do some rough math and add up the points it comes to a 96% of the total available points.  Add that to my perfect scores on Task 1 and I can argue an A+ in Management Communication (depending on the grading scale).  Since this is competency based education that system is the wrong context for discussing performance.  On both performance assessments I demonstrated competency which means I passed the course.  Task 1 had a rubric where I was scored as ‘Competent’ in all criteria.  This is the highest score and was worth 2 points per criterion.  Task 2 was a 4 point max which translated on the rubric as ‘Highly Competent.’  As an interesting note, I scored well above the minimum for competency.  The rubric for Task 2 contains 5 scores possible 0 through 4.  Based on this grading scale a C would be a 2 and demonstrate competency while the 1 would be equivalent to a D and require revisions.  See below screenshot.

Even as I write this I’m struggling to not use traditional terminology.  I wanted to say 1 point is failing.  In this case, a rewrite of this specific section would be required and not a failing result.  To truly fail on this course would require repeatedly being unable to pass and never finishing the course.  With a limit of three attempts prior to incurring extra fees for each additional attempt, I’m not sure whether failing in the traditional sense is even possible.  If willing to pay, a student could rewrite until they had no money.  Or perhaps after a number of paid attempts WGU would kick the student out of the program?  In all fairness, with the amount of mentoring and guidance WGU provides, a student would have to question their general capabilities in the subject or whether they are even trying if they could not rewrite sufficiently within three attempts.  I found all requirements of the Tasks in this course to be easy to complete.  I did put more time in to my responses than I would a normal work email or preparing for a small presentation.  This effort reflects my desire to complete each assessment on the first attempt.  A desire, I might add, that has so far been fulfilled on every assessment.  The most challenging part of this course was making the time to do the work.  My wife planned an entire weekend of activities and kept me far busier than I expected to be recently.  Even though I’ve been crushed by work responsibilities for the last two months and working on this MBA, I’ve been picking up more slack on the family front over the last two weeks.  This is worth considering because it is the real life that gets in the way of this accelerated program I’m working on.  My initial goal for finishing courses was every 16 days.  My revised estimate for this course just prior to starting it was 9 days.  Based on actual WGU credit, I completed the course in 12 days.  I did complete and submit all work in 10 days.  While it may seem like I estimated very well, I thought I could finish the course the first weekend or within 5 days. 

Interesting note on the WGU website tracking: I received credit for completion of this course based on the day I submitted the last Task for the Performance Assessment as opposed to the day my final Task was passed and my account was updated showing a Pass in the course.

Life intervened. Keeping the family happy and getting sleep myself so I can perform at my day job are two things which really can’t be ignored.  I’m looking forward to my vacation time coming this month because it will allow me to complete school work quickly and also spend some time with family which should reduce the overall burden for a week.  With four courses complete and only seven courses left in the program I’m getting excited about earning my MBA.   

Let me add a little more on the course.  I did reference the textbook for a couple of items based on suggestions from the Course Mentor videos.  He suggested having a touch of theory in part of the Task 2 responses.  I also referred to the six elements of informal proposals to set the framework for my persuasive letter.  Other than that I basically ignored the vast majority of resources included in MindTap or the Course of Study.  I’ve completed multiple communications or English courses and workshops in my life and I’ve been reading and studying the company announcements at work for two years.  I pay attention to how and when things are communicated so my expertise probably comes from simply paying attention.  I also enjoy writing, if the length of this blog hasn’t given that away already.  I’m sure I could still learn more about writing and communicating better, but unless I have a strong interest on a specific topic, I’m more concerned with finishing the MBA quickly.  My experience with this course may be one of the stronger arguments for competency based education.  We as a society are wasting time and resources having people sit through instruction they don’t need.  If someone is competent enough to perform in an area or at a task, they should be learning in the areas where they are not competent enough to perform necessary tasks.  Please take that as a broad generalization and not a specific guideline advocating that people never surpass the minimal effort or expertise.  Rather, this is a demonstration of focus on a goal.  My goal is not to spend significant time studying individual subjects.  My goal is to receive an accredited MBA.  Tonight, based on competency units earned, I’m 35% of the way to reaching that goal.