Decision Analysis. Ugh how I dreaded starting this class. I was told that it was sort of like statistics. As someone who barely passed stats as an undergrad, this class, more than any other at WGU caused me a lot of anxiety prior to even downloading the Course of Study.
My mentor and I decided that because of my feelings, we'd push DA off until late in my last term. I was so afraid of this class that I actually sat in front of my computer "working" on it for nearly a month before I even truly began working on any of the tasks.
When I finally did sit down to seriously work on the class, I realized something awesome! All of my fears, i.e. that it was going to be stats-based and that I'd be learning all about the 3Ms: mead, median, mode. Who can forget variance, standard deviation, bell curves, and of course the Greek brothers Lamda and Alpha? Was I finally going to learn how to determine how large a sample size should be?
Nope. I can tell you with 100% honesty that exactly 98% of those topics were never even mentioned. If you're in this program, you already know about median, it's just the average. The only other thing that I think was mentioned, but not actually used, was variance, i.e. how different is X from the average? Easy peasy. Ok no it's not.
I'm not going to lie to you and say that DA was a cakewalk. It wasn't. What I can tell you, however, is that it was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.
Some things to know before you start
Once I figured out the pattern that I needed to follow, things became a whole lot easier. If it seems like you're repeating yourself a lot, you're probably on the right track.
Forward!
My mentor and I decided that because of my feelings, we'd push DA off until late in my last term. I was so afraid of this class that I actually sat in front of my computer "working" on it for nearly a month before I even truly began working on any of the tasks.
When I finally did sit down to seriously work on the class, I realized something awesome! All of my fears, i.e. that it was going to be stats-based and that I'd be learning all about the 3Ms: mead, median, mode. Who can forget variance, standard deviation, bell curves, and of course the Greek brothers Lamda and Alpha? Was I finally going to learn how to determine how large a sample size should be?
Nope. I can tell you with 100% honesty that exactly 98% of those topics were never even mentioned. If you're in this program, you already know about median, it's just the average. The only other thing that I think was mentioned, but not actually used, was variance, i.e. how different is X from the average? Easy peasy. Ok no it's not.
I'm not going to lie to you and say that DA was a cakewalk. It wasn't. What I can tell you, however, is that it was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.
Some things to know before you start
- You do not need to know any math beyond basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division. Even the, you'll really only use it for Task 3.
- The tool that you use, either one called POM (the one I used, and would thus recommend) or Excel, will do all of the math, with the exception of a tiny bit in Task 3.
- When the question asks which "tool' you used and why, it is not referring to the fact that you chose POM or Excel. The question wants you to say which module you used within either POM or Excel.
- This class requires that you are extremely redundant.
Follow this recipe for each question- Describe the problem
- Recommend a solution
- Insert a copy of your output from your chosen tool
- Explain why you used your chosen tool
- When the question asks which "tool' you used and why, it is not referring to the fact that you chose POM or Excel. The question wants you to say which module you used within either POM or Excel.
- The POM tool is UGLY! It will do what you need it to do without a lot of extraneous information. Even if you do Tasks 1 and 2 in POM, you will have to do Task 3 in Excel. It's ok though. The course mentor does a really good job of explaining how and why to do this.
Task Writing Tips
- The videos are crucial. They will tell you everything that you need to know. Pick your tool of choice. POM is ugly, but it has everything that you need. Stick with one tool and use it throughout the course.Watch the "how to" videos without taking notes. These are the videos that teach you the concepts. Don't worry too much about learning all of the concepts.
- The video quality is very inconsistent. The ones for Task 1 and 4 are good The videos for Task 2 are extremely difficult to understand. All of the POM videos are good. My suggestion is to download the Panopto viewer so that you can read the transcript while you watch the video. It's also helpful when you need to review a video for a specific part. If you click on the line of the transcript, the video will start playing there.
- Scour the Communities page. I actually went through the entire forum (all 12 pages of it!) prior to starting each task and looked for questions and answers to each task before I began working on them. I copied and pasted all of the questions and answers in to a Word doc for reference as I had questions. I found this to be quite useful. I was able to learn from others' questions and answers.
- The class seems to have a bad reputation, or a reputation for being hard. I'm math/stats-phobic, and I didn't struggle at all. I do think, however, that the fact that I have taken a few stats classes did help with some of the concepts. The tools do all of the calculations for you. Your task is to understand what the numbers mean. The videos show you exactly how to do the calculations. I did mine in POM, and did not find it to be that difficult.
- In your task answers, try and answer the questions that the Shuzworld employees pose in the case study.
Once I figured out the pattern that I needed to follow, things became a whole lot easier. If it seems like you're repeating yourself a lot, you're probably on the right track.
Forward!