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!