As an online student at Western Governors University Indiana, I had a very pleasant educational experience. At the same time, I learned about some issues that wouldn’t have caused me trouble had I known what to avoid. As a student at WGU Indiana, or any of the branches of WGU, life will be much easier if the following things are avoided.
1.) ProctorU
WGU Indiana is an online university, so all the exams are given online. Rather than making students go to a library or school to have tests proctored, they send you a webcam and use a third party site to proctor your tests. ProctorU and Kryterion are the current companies they use.
The process is easy enough. You hook up the webcam and connect with one of the sites, then take your test while they observe you. For some reason, ProctorU has to reset just about everything before each test. In the end, you’re already stressed out over the test and then you spend about an hour trying to actually take the test before you even get access to it. By the time you get to the first question, you know far more about the process of setting up than you do about the subject matter at hand. This single issue was the most significant thing I was glad to say goodbye to when I finished my degree. If you find yourself getting ready to take a test and you have the option to use ProctorU or Kryterion, stick with Kryterion.
2.) Transferring Mid-Semester or Immediately Following Graduation
WGU Indiana enrolls new students every month. This is fine for people who have never been to college, but there is sometimes an issue with financial aid if you just finished a semester or just graduated. The problem is that financial aid runs for a full school year. When I got my AS from the local community college, I wanted to start working on my bachelor’s right away. Since I had already used my financial aid for two semesters that year, I couldn’t get any more until the next school year started.
3.) Changing Themes
WGU Indiana is a competency based program, so they put a lot of stock in capstone projects. These projects are basically a sequenced collection of all the tasks you have been working on. For example, in the master’s program I had to put together a collection of lesson plans, research, and research based documents that apply to one particular lesson I was trying to support. Because I had some new ideas as I was taking my classes, some of the documents I had created didn’t apply to the capstone project. I had to start all over and make some new ones. Had I realized that I could have used just about every document I had developed for previous classes to complete my capstone project, I could have put it together in a matter of hours because everything would have already been done.
4.) Student Loans
WGU Indiana has enough scholarships and partnerships that you really don’t need student loans. Use them if you need them, but avoid them if possible. Be sure to file your FAFSA on time so you can avoid student loans by meeting the criteria for state grants and scholarships.
5.) TaskStream
Every task completed by WGU students is graded by a third party system called TaskStream. They added a new feature this year; you can now see where your assignment is at in line. I, like just about every other WGU Indiana student, thought this was a fantastic feature because we no longer had to wait without having any idea at all when to expect our grades back. We were wrong. That feature turned every one of us into relentless TaskStream stalkers and impromptu IT gurus who were suddenly offering suggestions to each other concerning the fact that we somehow moved backwards in line. As with every school, WGU Indiana has a few negative points. The upside is that students can avoid these points by doing some planning and simply focusing on completing all of the elements of the program with one solid theme in mind.
Kathy Foust holds a Master’s of Education in instructional design as well as a Bachelor of Arts in elementary education and special education. She currently works from home as a freelance writer with a focus on instructional materials.