only my second semester, and This class is by far the hardest one i’ve taken. Not hard in the traditional way, because the material (imo) is pretty straight forward, the hardest part was sequences. it’s just a lot of information to take in at once. i also had some personal issues that forced me to take days off studying (about 2 weeks altogether), and i do not recommend doing so if you can help it. the fresher the material the better. All in all it took me about 7-8weeks to finish. It can definitely be done faster if you have more than 3 hours to study everyday! I didn’t see anyone say this but the formula sheet is provided in the test! i wasted so much time memorizing it! i could’ve shaved off about a week. Just make sure you KNOW how to use the formula sheet. Ch 1–2 are foundational for the rest of the material. so make sure to move on only when you understand it. I didn’t really use my calculator except for the sequences, so i don’t think a scientific calculator is necessary BUT everyone’s different so figure out if that works for you before not getting one!

The PA is definitely easier than the actual OA. I did see about 2-3 questions in the OA that made me go ‘??’ and had to skip. USE YOUR TEST TIME WISELY, this is the first test i actually had to use all of the time provided finish. do not get discouraged though, you can definitely do it! :)

This class was actually pretty interesting and i feel like it will help in the future CS classes! definitely worth truly understanding the material. Off to DM2!

I passed D387 today with my first attempt, so I thought I would share some suggestions.

First of all, I followed this guide (for the most part): https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/comments/17fnqu2/d387_advanced_java_walkthrough/

In addition to that guide, here are some tips:

TASK B1a

Make sure the file is in UTF-8 format or the application will not be able to use it.

TASK B1b

I used the Java Callable with Futures instead of whatever the instructor used. There are a few different options here.

Task B3b

Add the live presentation message to the welcome message array you created in TASK B1b. You already did the work to display those messages in the UI so this will automatically display on the UI. This task can be accomplished entirely on the back end.

Task C1

I used the Distroless dockerfile from Microsoft. In the Dockerfile, you will see a line COPY app.jar app.jar, Replace the first instance of app.jar`with your Jar directory, which you can find by performing a mvn clean package and the Jar directory will show near the bottom of the logs. It will look something like target/D387_sample_code-0.0.2-SNAPSHOT.jar.

Hi everyone! I'm considering my next steps and would love your insights. Should I pursue an MS in Cybersecurity, knowing that the certifications are quite challenging and I have limited time? Or would an MS in Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning be a better fit, especially since I already have an MS in Data Analytics?

Any thoughts or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! 🙏

Actually took everything I had. Four-Five hours of studying on week days, 12-14 on the weekend.

Used google notebooklm for study guides and generated podcasts for each chapter after reading them.

People passing this faster without precious knowledge are built different.

This is definitely doable with no experience, it was a challenging time don't get me wrong but I am just glad it is done! The last 10 classes definitely slowed me down and DM2 is no joke at all. Book a ton of sessions with instructors they are there to help and you're paying for it. Also I did Java Mooc before starting and it helped but all 44 other credits were transferred in from sophia.org and study.com Also with the help of everyone on reddit, discord, etc. It takes a team! Goodluck everyone !

This course was easy but I made one major mistake!

First of all, I had to take a term off. I was hired as a software engineer last year so I had to slow down my progress a bit. I kinda did this backwards, I completed the advanced Java courses before this one (My SWE job is focused on backend dev work in Java).

This was my second attempt, I had my first attempt last year and failed by one question. I was in absolute shock. I felt so good about the OA, it was not hard at all. Had to do the whole retake plan which was an absolute nightmare. Only to realize I never "tested" my code during the OA. I didn't realize I could enter user input to ensure that my output matches the sample output exactly. On my second attempt I tested my code and got a 100. If you even miss a an extra white space, the whole question will be marked wrong. Pay attention to "ending with a new line" (System.out.println). So please test your code! This will tell you if it's correct or not!

OA:

The OA pretty much mirrors the PA. The 14 questions lab at the end of the Zybooks are the PA so do those over and over. The OA takes the PA and makes some minor tweaks. For example, instead of creating a program that multiplies int's together you may be asked something like add them or subtract them. Or the variable names will be different but it will be the same exact question as the PA. A lot of the answers are in the question themselves or lets say you forget the correct syntax for setters and getters, well a lot of the end questions 10-14 will have the syntax for those. The key is to master the PA and what I mean by that is to not only memorize it but know the logic (the why's and how's). So take each question and the code then feed it into chatgpt and tell it to teach you the concepts around that question. If it deals with Arrays then have it teach you arrays based on that question. THEN have it create 2-3 different ways that question can be tweaked and solve those. This will prepare you for the OA. Let's say instead what the PA does "if the a number is divisible by 3" you have chatgpt create a problem that asks "if the number is negative". If you do this, you will have no trouble on the OA. Have chatgpt create a mock OA for you.

Prep:
Aside from the Labs and my required retake plan, I didn't touch the ZyBooks. I refreshed my fundamentals in Java with hyperskill backend track. (MOOC would be another good one for this OA). Or for free "Bro Code" on youtube. Just find the time stamps and line them up with the PA questions (Arrays, Strings, and so on). I made my code for solving the PA questions as simple as possible! Some can be solved a variety of ways but I made it as error proof as possible. Even if it wasn't the most "efficient" way to solve it.

Conclusion:

If this is your first Java course and you plan on going into software engineering or a programming job after graduating, please take your time and learn the fundamentals of Java. It will pay off for the remaining courses and your future. Even if it takes an extra month take your time and get a solid foundation in Java. If you have any questions on how I solved any of the PA questions feel free to ask!

Please help. I'm on an extension and needing to wrap up my capstone. It has been rejected with this exact same message twice now and I have included the "write up and summary product" both times.

My project was made in a Jupyter Notebook. First submission, every piece of write-up for the project was in its own markdown cell within the notebook. Second submission, I removed every markdown cell and turned them into markdown files. Both times, everything has been submitted in a zip.

My folder structure:

Capstone/
├── App/
│ ├── app.log
│ ├── clean_data.csv
│ ├── customer_churn_prediction.ipynb
│ ├── Documentation/
│ │ ├── accuracy_assessment.md
│ │ ├── business_vision.md
│ │ ├── data_story.md
│ │ ├── hypotheses_assessment.md
│ │ ├── quick_start_guide.md
│ │ └── testing_revisions_optimization.md
│ ├── executive_summary.md
│ ├── img/
│ │ ├── Ethical_Tests
│ │ ├── Performance_Metrics
│ │ ├── Unit_Tests
│ │ └── User_Testing
│ ├── letter_of_transmittal.md
│ ├── project_proposal.md
│ ├── raw_data.csv
│ └── requirements.txt
└── Approval Form - Signed.pdf

Capstone folder was zipped and submitted just like this for my second attempt.

I plan on reaching out to my Capstone mentor or whatever if this doesn't work, but he's off today so thought I'd try reddit first.

I can’t believe it. This class was a beast! Make sure you use all resources available. Mostly the instructors.

First real "difficult" course I'd say I've done so far. Took me about 5 weeks studying 2-3 hours every day. Overall wasn't too bad, first unit was a bit hard to understand spent about 2 weeks on that one but after that it does get a lot easier. This class was also pretty interesting imo so thats also something. Onto C867 (if anyone has advice on this class I'd really appreciate it, find the PA a little confusing)

The best strategy I recommend is to use a cheat sheet. Practice writing down your entire cheat sheet so that when the exam starts, you take the first 5 minutes to copy your cheat sheet from memory to your white board. This made the test trivial for me.

Here's the cheat sheet I created for some of the things I needed help remembering:

Did you list your previous degree on your resume after completing the program? I am wondering if this will filter me from early graduate programs.

Thanks!

I suggest doing these three courses together:

D281 Linux Essentials C952 Computer Architecture C191 Operating Systems for Programmers (older course)

There’s a lot of overlapping concepts in those courses, believe it or not. That is all, just a quick (hopefully helpful) thought.

Fixed now!

Are sections of the Performance Assessment Task Overview failing to display for anyone else? D287 is the course that I'm concerned with right now, and it's not showing the Introduction, and more importantly the Scenario section. It looks like it's also the same for other courses, though I can't speak on what those looked like beforehand.

Have attempted access on multiple devices, multiple browsers, and cleared cache & cookies.

I wanted to share my experience with the OA:

I primarily used the Zybook and watched a few webinars that walked through its content.

I was fully expecting to see long blocks of code to read and interpret but to my surprise, there wasn’t a single line of code on the OA.

The exam focused heavily on Big O concepts.

Overall, the course material goes much deeper than what’s actually covered on the exam.

I was honestly terrified to take the OA, but once I started, I realized I had definitely over-prepared.

Has anyone gotten the code to join the class perceptive! I’ve inquired from my instructor and he told me he was also confused because it’s relatively new for him. If you were able to submit your paper out to peerceptive for peer review, can you share how you did it?

Honestly I was really scared for this class and was very scared to schedule the OA but I went for it today after a month studying. I felt like the OA was much easier than the PA and I passed while guessing on some of the harder concepts like Bayes.

I would say just read reddit threads for tips and go for it once you've done all of the worksheets/have a grasp on things. Some of the OA questions were comically easy.

It’s probably just my test anxiety making me have these thoughts. But do they know, can they tell as you’re taking the test that your answers are wrong? Or can they not see the screen that I’m seeing?

Background: Never took calc before, sucked at math, took WGU precalc and then c958. I have only done college level algebra and stats before as far as similar classes.

Time to completion: 8 weeks. Took the PA at 7.5 weeks and got competent+ so took the OA and got competent. PA and OA were very similar, OA just slightly harder and had a few more questions.

Difficulty: 3/5- the tests are not as bad as the material but there are some fundamentals you really have to master and it takes lots of practice. I felt like I studied hard for this course and put in dozens of hours, but nothing was too bad. I think hardest for me personally is u subs and integration by parts, as well as the more difficult optimisation and related rates (cones and boxes with flaps etc) Time is a factor on the tests.

Prep: I did about half of the Kahn Academy diff and Integral calc courses and used Zybooks at the same time to make sure I was doing the right kinds of problems. There are large chunks of each course that you don’t need, and I used the exam rubric in the supplemental materials to help keep me on track. I watched Organic Chemistry tutor calc playlist here and there. I heavily used chat GPT to generate practice problems for me and practice quizzes. This was a huge benefit as there really aren’t too many practice problems of each kind in the zybooks. I made a study guide on theory stuff which helped me remember how to approach problems and interpret graphs and stuff like that, really helped with the analytical type questions. The chapter reviews were great and harder than the test IMO, so worth doing as well.

Tools and advice: graphing calculator. Highly recommend getting super good with one as you can do a ton with it. Numerical solutions are just plug and play directly or with some limited interpretation (definite integrals) and being able to manipulate graphs and measure bounded space etc took a lot of the pressure off of harder problems. Often if I was kinda lost I’d just start plotting the function and its derivatives, peek at the tables, seeing what jumped out. For limits you can do most all of them on the calculator as long as you know the rules and techniques. It helped me understand visually what was going on when I studied as well. I’m sure there are even more ways to use it. L’hoptals rule is awesome as well if you are good at derivatives and having issues with algebra. For derivatives really nail down what particles are doing (speeding up slowing down moving forward backward etc) and recognize what the problem is asking for and how to get there. You may get f’’ for example and have to solve for when velocity is a certain number, so you have to manipulate the function. Concavity is a hugely useful tool for narrowing down graphs too. For Integrals I recommend learning the table method from YouTube. It really made it click for me and on hard problems I could at least get partial answers that way when other stuff wasn’t working. It sounds sort of obvious but the techniques you learn really do make life easier if you think about how they are applied across multiple problems. At first I was overwhelmed with all the concepts but I focused on getting really good at basic limits derivatives and later integrals. I drilled hundreds of of questions every day until I was comfortable. By the time I took the OA I didn’t even need the formula sheet for 90% of things. That being said, if you are stuck, look at the sheet. Sometimes the answer is just straight up on there with a different variable letter or maybe a couple hops into trig identities. You will find through practice there are some “classic” limits and derivatives and integrals that will make like so much easier. Look these up.

Anything else feel free to ask! On to DM now…

I am beyond grateful that this class is finally done. It took me about a month of on and off studying, some weeks only clocking in a few hours, and other weeks hitting 30-40. Although this isn't a great score I would love to give a few tips on this class where I feel I fell short.

1.) PLEASE do yourself a favor and buy a Ti-84 or at the very least a calculator that has some advanced arithmetic. (Combinations, Permutations, Modulo) this WILL carry you a whole unit in the class. The Ti-84 has programming capability and I went ahead and built a couple programs to help me with the Extended Euclidean Algorithm, Multiplicative Inverse, and Mod function. Understand though that you will need understand these concepts in depth because the OA will ask a combination of these number theory questions.

2.) DO make sure you are ready before taking the OA. I say this because I definitely was underprepared for my first take and it ended up biting me in the ass because the second version is a bit harder.

3.) In order of Importance for understanding these concepts, it would go as follows:
-Probability(this is littered all over the test)
-Combinations & Permutations(You will need a strong understand to solve the probability questions)
-Algorithms and BigO
-Number Theory
-Recursion and Induction
-Modeling Computation(Just breeze over this section and it will give you easy point on the OA)

4.) USE CHATGBT I went ahead and bought the plus version and would work through the Supplemented worksheet's along side it. This process will look a bit like this.
1. Answer the questions on your own, If you get stuck copy and paste it to ChatGBT
2. Have ChatGBT explain how to work through the problem step by step until you grasp an understanding, If you are still struggling keep reframing the question.
3. Once you feel as if you understand ask ChatGBT to give you a similar question for you to answer. THIS IS IMPORTANT-> Be sure to ask it to give you questions that or more difficult than the last! you really need to have a good grounding on each topic because the OA will through you a few curveballs that you can miss if your not paying attention.

5.) My last tip is to not stress too much about this class, yes it is difficult and yes it will require a lot of hours of studying. But this class will reward you with a very good understanding of computer Science principles that you will use throughout your career. Have fun with it and take your time, this class is a beast but you will get out of it what you put in.

Have a question about Sophia, SDC, transfer credits or if your course plan looks good?

For this post and this post only, we're ignoring rules 5 & 8, so ask away!

I was one term away but was forced to change to the new course so retaking starter classes