Business Law (8 Days)

This blog post is part of a series where I chronicle my advancement through WGU’s Bachelor of Science, Business – Information Technology Management degree. It includes detailed reports on my study methods and strategies as well as occasional tips and tricks. To see all entries in this series, click the “WGU” link under “Categories” on the left sidebar (bottom of the page if viewing on mobile).

I found Business Law to be very interesting. I’ve heard it said that you don’t really retain knowledge gained when brute-force studying the way I did for this class. However, I think I’ve gotten a lot of value out of it. I know what torts are, I know the basics of contract law, and if I’m ever injured by a product, I can probably reasonably assess whether I have a good case.

This class actually became my benchmark for “difficult” classes (until, of course, I hit Principles of Finance). Whenever determining my own performance or some variable of a class, I would compare it against Business Law to see how it held up. All in all, I found the class beneficial and interesting, and I think new students should be excited to take it.

Here’s my process:

Keep in mind that each day I was devoting between 4 – 7 hrs to study, and most days it was on the longer side

Day 1: (1) Downloaded the course study guide, (2) Made Flash Cards (based on study guide) for units 1 -2
Day 2: (1) Made flashcards for units 3, (2) Studied flashcards previously made
Day 3: (1) Made flashcards for units 4, (2) Studied flashcards previously made
Day 4: (1) Made flashcards for units 5 – 6, (2) Studied flashcards previously made
Day 5: (1) Studied flashcards, (2) Took Pre-assessment and analyzed results

If you want to check out my Anki flashcard deck for this course, you can download them here. If you need help importing the deck, check out my guide here.

After Pre-assessment #1 (Competent):

I scored high in some areas, and low in others, but I passed. I also saw what percentages-of-importance the different topics held.

I made a small table in excel that had the following columns:

(1) Subject (i.e. Contractual Relationships),
(2) Section (i.e. 2),
(3) Competency (my own score, estimated on a scale of 1 – 10, i.e. 7),
(4) Importance (the percentage assigned by WGU to the topic, i.e. 17%)

Once the table was complete, I sorted it by importance, I compared my “competency” to the “importance” and that gave me insight into what I needed to study before taking the pre-assessment again (anything with a competency level of < 8, and an importance of > 10 needed work). For me that turned out to be Unit X, Unit Y, and Unit Z (in descending order of importance).

Day 6: (1) Read all chapters in Unit X and took detailed notes
Day 7: (1) Read all chapters in Unit Y and took detailed notes, (2) took 2nd Pre-assessment, (3) scheduled the Objective Assessment for next day

After Pre-assessment #2 (Competent):

I scored better on pre-assessment #2. However, as I took the assessment I noticed a lot of questions on a topic that I hadn’t recalled studying. After the assessment, I went back and realized that I had missed an important and *long* chapter in Unit X.

There was a fairly big difference between the importance value of Units X/Y, and Unit Z, so I decided to focus my studying efforts on that last chapter of Unit X instead of studying Unit Z.

Day 8: (1) Read the last chapter of Unit X and took notes, (2) I had a little extra time before my OA, so I read as much of Unit Z as I could before: (3) Took the OA

After the Objective Assessment:

I passed the OA with a higher score than I did on either of the pre-assessments. I was extremely nervous when taking the OA, and have never sighed a bigger sigh of relief as I did when I saw that I passed!

7 thoughts on “Business Law (8 Days)”

  1. I took the OA twice and failed. I looked over your post and it helped with different approaches that I could take. I will definitely be going over your blog for my future classes. This has been a big help. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Hey Crystal,

      I’m glad my notes helped! Let me know how you do! If you have any specific questions with anything, feel free to ask and I’ll do what I can to help.

      Thanks
      Chad

      Reply
  2. I am about to start Business Law and this helped me so much! I will be studying exactly as you did and I can’t wait to see how I do on the pre-assessment. Question- is the final assessment a lot different than the pre-assessment?

    Reply
    • Hi Kathryn,

      I’m glad I’ve helped! My suggestion is to get those flashcards created and then just bust through them. Flashcards suck, I know, but they were a life-saver for me.

      As far as the OA goes, No I didn’t think it was terribly different from the PA. I suppose sometimes they cover slightly different topics within the same subject area. As long as you have a pretty good grasp on the material, you should be fine. To my recollection, there aren’t any “trick” questions.

      Thanks
      Chad

      Reply
  3. Hi Chad! I’m loving your WGU blogs…keep ’em coming! 🙂

    Quick Q…how did you go about the reading? I’m just starting this class today. Did you actually do all of the reading or just make/use flash cards and study x,y, and z, or ?? Please let me know as there is a lot of material and I don’t want to spend time on anything that is not ‘necessary’, albeit interesting…

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Hi Dee,

      Before the first pre-assessment, I studied exclusively from the flash cards. After that, when I was actually reading, I *only read units X, Y, and Z*. I never read any other chapters. The only exception would be if there was something in the flashcards that wasn’t clear, in which case I might look up the topic for clarification.

      I hope that answers your question!

      Good luck!
      Chad

      Reply

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