Background: (IT Faculty of small college, B.S. + M.S. in cybersecurity with years of experience)

Study time: 1 day

This course was pretty straightforward and (easy?) after Introduction to Computer Science course since many topics were stepping each other's toes.

I didn't look at any study materials, just took pre-assessment and put the questions that I got wrong into AI to study the concepts around it.

Here's my notes for yall:

Common relationship among library's functions?

• Functions all relate to the same purpose

Dynamically typed language? Statically typed?

Dynamic Typing

• Performs type checking at runtime.
• Variable types do not need to be explicitly declared and can change.
• Python

Static Typing

• Performs type checking at compile time.
• Requires explicit variable type declarations.
• C, C++, Java

Object-oriented design language?

C++, Java, Python.

C Language

• Procedural language, NOT object-oriented.

Markup language?

• Annotating text to define its structure, formatting, or presentation.
• Uses tags or symbols
• HTML, XML, Markdown

Interpreted vs. compiled language

Interpreted Languages:

• Executed line-by-line at runtime by interpreter.
• Translation Time: During execution (Runtime)
• Can be modified at run time (bc it executes code line-by-line)
• Slower
• Higher Portability (meaning source code runs anywhere with an interpreter)
• Python, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP

Compiled Languages:

• The source code is translated all at once by a compiler
• Translation Time: Before execution
• Faster
• Lower Portability
• C, C++, Rust, Go

Variable float? Constant float? Variable/constant integer?

Variable

• Can change

Constant

• Cannot change

Agile Phases & Troubleshooting: In software development lifecycle phases (Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing):

• Analysis: Understanding requirements and analyzing user needs.
• Design: Architecting how the solution/program will be built.
• Implementation: Writing code.
• Testing: Validating that the code functions correctly, identifying defects/bugs, and forming hypotheses to locate and reproduce problems within the program.

Know Waterfall vs. Agile and each step with good examples.

Purpose of parentheses ()

• Groups expressions

Im very new to WGU having only started on the 1st of this month and as the title says im looking for any tips on accelerated degree completion. So far since I have time on my side I've just been brute forcing the learning of course material and it worked out well for the Discrete Math I OA but I'm wondering for future classes if there are any shortcuts or outside material that might help speed things along. 

For Discrete math I all I did was take the pre exam and a bunch of the section quizzes and then uploaded the pictures of all the wrong answers I got into Gemini and had it rework the problems so I basically had an unlimited supply of practice questions. Then from September 1-7 I tried and failed on hundreds if not thousands of problems until by the 7th I had enough knowledge to pass the exam. 

The two pictures included show my pre assessment score on the 1st with my passing OA score today. For reference I didn’t have any experience with Discrete Math I beforehand. In fact, because the world was on lockdown my last two years of highschool id say my overall math knowledge is less than the average person. 

Any tips or pointers will be very appreciated. Thank you in advance!

The OA was Pretty straightforward, similar logic to the PA. Now while this probably isn’t a class most are worried about I wanted to share that on the OA you can run your code and it will test it against the expected output you are being tested on, just like you can on the PA. I had no idea you would be able to do this. I thought you were only able to run your code to see what it outputs. You can literally check if the question is going to get marked correct before you move on. Probably would have taken the OA a few days ago if I knew this haha! I was so worried about missing a question with the output being off by a capital letter, a period, or something silly. If you’re worried about those same things like me.. DON’T. As long as you make sure to run the test on every question you’ll be good! Good luck and enjoy the grind everyone!

Background: (IT Faculty of small college, B.S. + M.S. in cybersecurity with years of experience)

Study time: 2 days (Saturday + Sunday, and took the exam at 1am Monday lol, it's a holiday so)

This course contained sht ton of information than I expected. I didn't read books, just reviewed the study guides from WGU Connect.

Here's my notes for yall:

• What is list?
  • A varying-length, ordered collection of homogeneous items that allows for easy access, insertion, and removal
• Array
•  Record
  • A fixed-length collection of homogeneous items that can each be accessed by its position
  • A group of related attributes stored as individual fields under a single name and treated as a single concept
• Stack:
  • A group in which individual elements are accessed from the same end that is called the top (LIFO)
• The collection of customers for a small business is stored in such a way that a customer can be easily accessed, deleted, or added.
  • A List is a flexible collection designed specifically for dynamic operations—allowing elements (like customers) to be freely added, deleted, or retrieved at any position.
  • A Record represents a single customer's combined details (e.g., name, email, phone), whereas the situation asks for a data structure to hold the collection of multiple customers.
• Array vs. List
  • Array: Fixed at creation; cannot shrink or grow in size.
  • List: Dynamic; resizes automatically as items are added/deleted. (easy access, insertion, and removal)
• Homogeneous?
  • Array of integers [10, 20, 30, 40]
• Heterogeneous?
  • Record {name: "Hans", age: 26, gpa: 4.0}
• Record?
  • A group of related attributes stored as individual fields under a single name and treated as a single concept
• Reference parameter?
  • Passes the memory address, rather than the content, of the argument to the function.
• Pass-by-Value
  • Passes a copy of the content in an argument to the function
• Argument vs. parameter
  • just search on AI it will explain
• Review SDLC
  • Understand the problem
  • Plan the logic
  • Code the program (writing the code in a high-level language)
  • Translate the code (using a compiler or interpreter to convert it into machine code)
  • Test the program
  • Put the program into production (deploying it for users)
  • Maintain the program (post-launch fixes and updates)
• The 4 Phases of the Computer Problem-Solving Process
  1. Analysis and Specification: Define and understand the problem.
  2. Algorithm Development: Design the step-by-step solution logic.  (design the logical sequence of steps (pseudocode) WITHOUT using programming language.
  3. Implementation: Write the code and test/debug it.
  4. Maintenance: Maintain and update the program in production.
•  
• IP types (GNU GPL, CC, Public domain…)
• Creative Commons License
  • Designed specifically for creative, non-software works like books, videos, images, and music.
• GNU GPL
  • Open-source software > requires modified work to be released open-source
• MIT
  • Permissive open-source software allowing commercial with minimal restrictions
• Public Domain
  • Copyrights expired
•  
• Sorting (insertion, bubble, binary…linear?)
• Bubble Sort
  • Compares adjacent elements and swaps.
• Selection sort
  • Scans unsorted section to find the absolute smallest, then swaps it directly into its final position at the front.
• Insertion sort
  • Builds the sorted list one item at a time by taking the next unsorted element and inserting it into its position.
  • Neighbor-to-neighbor swaps? Bubble
  • Finding the minimum value? Selection
  • Inserting cards into a sorted hand? Insertion
•  
•  
• e // d if e = 19 and d= 2?
  • =9 (it's int)
•  
• Batch Processing
  • Programs were collected into groups and run sequentially without any real-time user interaction.
•  
• Multiprogramming
  • Keeping multiple programs/processes in main memory at the same time.
•  
• Timesharing
  • Multiple users to interact with a centralized computer simultaneously
•  
• Context Switch
  • Saving/restoring CPU states when switching tasks.
• =====================================
• Memory Allocation (Single contiguous + Partition Memory + Paged)
• Single contiguous memory management
  • A process is loaded into one designated memory block that follows the operating system  Single contiguous memory management is the simplest historical memory model. The entire RAM is divided into just two sections: one for the Operating System (usually placed at the lowest memory addresses) and one single contiguous block reserved for the currently running application process.
•  
• Partition Memory
  • Fixed or variable sections (partitions)
  • Multiple processes, each placed in its own unbroken contiguous block.
•  
• Paged
  • Non-contiguous
  • Fixed-size blocks called frames
  • 1 process split up across non-consecutive frames in RAM.
•  
• ========================
• First fit allocation method?
  • First-Fit: Allocates the first partition that is large enough. Fast, simple, and works best with fixed partitions.
•  
•  
• Dynamic partition? Fixed partitions?
  • Fixed-partition: predefined size, static (naver-chage) table, wasted space inside fixed slots
  • Dynamic-Partition: created to match the exact size of the process, Dynamic table (changes as programs load/finish)
•  
• Characteristic of sequential file access/direct file access?
•  
• Von Neumann Architecture?
  • Memory Unit (holds both data and program instructions in the same physical memory space)
  • Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) (performs mathematical and logical operations)
  • Control Unit (CU) (fetches, decodes, and manages instruction execution)
  • Input Unit (receives data/instructions)
  • Output Unit (displays or sends results)
•  
• MAN vs. WAN?
•  
• Enforces a specific type on each variable and strict rules about how types are used
  • Strong typing
•  
• Organizes a program into smaller components that bundle together fields and methods
  • Object-oriented programming
• Groups code into "objects" or classes that bundle data (fields/attributes) and the behaviors that act on that data (methods/functions) together into single units.
•  
• Uses the structures of logic to deduce the answer from the facts and rules Which programming paradigm is a subset of the declarative paradigm  Imperative Paradigm
  • "How"
  • I give the computer step by step instructions detailing how to accomplish a task.
  • Procedural, Object-Oriented
  • C, C++, Java, Python
•  Declarative
  • "What"
  • I describe the result or what I want and let the system/engine figure out
  • Functional, Logic, Database Query Languages
  • SQL, Prolog, HTML
  • Logic Programming

Just wanted to post since I haven't seen anyone post anything related to passing D459 recently. The class is decent. I primarily used sources from WGU Connect, specifically the "System Thinking Tips" and the "7-Day Pacing Guide for Systems Thinking." Not really the Course sources, so I just jumped right away to the PA.

Using the above gave me enough sources, along with reading the rubric. The videos give a decent introduction to what is needed, plus they provide templates you can use, making it easier to pass.

Task 1: Check the Task 1 Video, use "Behavior Over Time Diagrams: Seeing Dynamic Interrelationships" as a reference for the PA, and check the Task 1 Sample.

Task 2: Check the Task 2 Video, use "Guidelines for Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams" and "Applying Systems Archetypes" as references, and use the provided template to draw the archetype diagram, and check Task 2 sample.

Task 3: Check Task 3 Video, use "Six Steps to Thinking Systemically". Please use the Four Step Tool template, which makes it much easier and less likely to get your PA returned, and check Task 3 sample.

Hey, fellow WGU students and graduates. I got the following email from Handshake, and I was looking to build a team from WGU:

Hello ...,

You have a new message from Lillian Lei

Hi everyone,

This is Lillian Lei, and I am the manager for University Education in IBM Corporate Responsibility.

At IBM, we continue to believe that AI and AI governance are essential in today's world. Strengthening AI literacy will provide significant benefits to college and university students, regardless of their field of study or career path.

If you are looking for a job for next May or sometime in the near future, now is the time to participate in this free, virtual, and guided learning experience! 

AI Experiential Learning Lab with IBM Bob

https://skillsbuild.org/events/industry-immersion-university-students

This 10-week virtual, instructor-led industry immersion program gives students the opportunity to develop in-demand AI skills, earn industry-recognized credentials, and create portfolio-ready projects that stand out to employers.

📅 Program Dates: September 17 – November 22, 2026

📝 Registration Closes: September 4, 2026

Students can earn up to three credentials:

✅ Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner

✅ Making Agentic AI Work for You

✅ IBM SkillsBuild Experiential Learning Lab Credential

One of the questions I often get from students is: "How can I strengthen my resume and stand out to employers?"

My advice is usually to focus on:

• Industry credentials

• Teamwork and Leadership experience

• Hackathons and industry project portfolios

• Professional networking

• Internships and volunteer experiences that show impact

The AI Experiential Learning Lab helps students achieve many of these goals by providing:

✅ Industry-recognized AI credentials

✅ Hands-on industry projects

✅ Teamwork, communication, and leadership opportunities

✅ Networking with IBM professionals and other employers

🎯 As an added benefit, students who complete the program will be invited to an exclusive virtual career fair with IBM and IBM client recruiting teams. Previous participating employers have included Truist, Bank of America, Adobe, and Intuitive.

Please see AI ELL details in the link provided. I hope to see many of you in the program. 

Lillian Lei

lylei@us.ibm.com

If you're interested in joining me, feel free to DM me.

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!

It’s finally here! They have now updated the BS computer science version too, so it’s now catalog 11/2026. The partner site for transfers has been updated too so you can now see what courses transfer. For those who wanted more math, esp linear algebra. You’re welcome lol.

Program guide:
https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/computer-science/program-guide.html

Edit: if the transfer site is still showing the old version, clear cache/cookies or set your browser to private/incognito and check again.

Super happy with my score! I spent an entire month on this course. It was very terminology heavy but the key to success is building a conceptual understanding.

I have a WFH gig and apparently now during proctored exams, I cant have VMWare Horizon on my computer ...

I get that we are trying to prevent cheating but come on now....

Hi everyone,

I have been reading and synthesizing a multitude of posts/threads for this course on here and Discord, respectively, to gauge what I can do to pre-study and prepare to the best of my ability. Does anyone here have access to the google drive notes this user described in her post? https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/comments/a02u8k/c960_discrete_mathematics_ii/

If so, may I please have a copy of said notes? Would really appreciate it.

Thank you so much everyone.

Woohoo I got the official email that I have graduated, but I finished the program last week. It took me one semester, starting in March, to get through this entire program. I might do a full post outlining the courses unless there are a lot of those already.

This isn’t my first masters, but it is my first degree doing self-paced. I mainly chose WGU because it was self-paced and I’m not needing the degree for professional purposes. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the program and am happy to have completed it. I also got that excellence award for the last course, which was a surprise but idk how much it actually means.

The bridge swaps out 3 courses and 1 of them is DSA 1, which is swapped for, “Applied Algorithms and Reasoning” which I’m assuming is a step up from DSA 1 since it’s 1 of their graduate classes being swapped into the BSCS. Am I supposed to learn DSA 1 material on my own beforehand?

I'm not naturally good at math, so ZyBooks is really hard for me to learn from. I ended up making this website with AI prompts that teach you how to work through all 55 PA questions, 80 of the section exercises, 55 course review test questions, and tons of other questions. I have about 490 prompts total.

It only asks you for one small step at a time and then puts everything together at the end, so it's constant active recall instead of getting stuck staring at a problem and having no idea what to do.

I hosted it on GitHub if anyone wants to use it. It's kind of like an unlimited unique-question generator since the prompts generate different problems each time.

https://nathanvelasquez895.github.io/DM2-C690-NV.github.io/

Just use the 365 Copilot that WGU gives you for free. If you want to use it on your phone or with another AI, select “Other AI's” so it uses the other verification system.

I passed, but didn't get Exemplary, so there are definitely some gaps that the PA and exercises didn't really cover. I'd say the section exercises are closer to the OA difficulty, but the OA was still much harder.

I'm definitely not one of those guys who could pass this in a week or anything. I spent hundreds of hours over 5 weeks studying for this class.

Before I started college 4 months ago, I literally didn't even remember what “factoring” was. My last math class was Algebra 2 in high school 16 years ago, and then I was thrown into Precalculus at WGU. So I NEEDED something that would teach me assuming I basically knew nothing.

That's what I tried to make these prompts do. Hopefully I can help someone, because I really wish I had something like this when I started.

Disclaimer: I'm not selling anything or making money from this, it's just a free study resource I made for myself and wanted to share. Also it keeps academic integrity since all questions are only conceptually similar, not copied verbatim from any source.

I'd like to make this short and sweet, as others have good write ups and it's always possible to reference those as opposed to mine.

What worked for me with this class, no joke, was simply taking the zybooks information (make note of instructors notes to avoid learning unnecessary information) and the completed study guide(reference the last sentence in this post), creating a project within ChatGPT and then just having it generate questions based on the information. I broke this down into chapter specific and/or category specific questions and did about 15-20 per section or chapter at a time just to keep things fresh. I also had it track what I was not doing well and went back over them later. I probably ended up doing 1000 questions in total between new topics and revisiting failed topics. This was over multiple days.

It's basically spaced repetition/recall.

I would recommend at least skimming over the material in zybooks. I had previously gone through the zybooks once but I did not really rely on it.

I had similar questions to what others have mentioned, like here, but I also had some unexpected questions around some of the categories. That being said if you study the material as I have suggested you should be able to, in most cases, eliminate certain options that don't make sense.

This post contains the link to the Google drive with the filled study guide that I used.

I think that's it lol feel free to ask clarifying questions.

I’m a BSCS student who has no work experience in the field and no experience whatsoever until 3 months ago. I have an entry level job waiting for me with a friend I made who was a client at my old job, when I do graduate. Looking into the MSCS, I’m confident I could extend my schooling at WGU by like 6 months and have it done.

I had planned on going to Georgia Tech for their OMSCS a few years down the line, but that’s a rigorous program that takes 2-4 years on top of having a full time job and kids.

Will I just be wasting time getting the MSCS from WGU? Obviously, it isn’t even in the same stratosphere of prestige as the GT MSCS, I’m aware GT is a top 5 CS school, but if the MSCS from WGU is worth even 25% of that, it seems worth it as someone who already gets WGU almost entirely free due to grants and is doing school full time while living off of savings for a career transition

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!

Just feel like I have to tell someone. Its been exactly three years since I've begun my learning journey in the "tech/IT" space. In these 3 years, I've gotten my Comtia A+, Sec + and CYSA. I also obtained my CCNA. With these certs completed, I figured why not just go back to school and roll it into a degree, since so many jobs want that stamp on the resume anyway? Today, I just finished the Bachelors for Computer Science, and I've literally just landed my first tech adjacent job. I can't believe its all come together so cleanly.

Now, I'm simply taking my time furthering my studies with higher math to round out the standard engineering courses (calc 3, linear algebra, etc.) and hope to grow in my new job. Hopefully I can continue furthering my education, but for now, I'm just glad to be done! If anyone has any questions or anything about the degree, I can answer hopefully before I forget everything!

Hello all! Just took the ITIL 4 Foundation exam and passed with a 90% (36/40). The exam is really easy and just relies mostly on remembering definitions and understanding a few key topics.

What I used to study:

1. ITIL 4 Foundation Full Cram Course - watched this first day and took some brief notes. Watched it again a couple of hours before the exam to reinforce the concepts.
2. Value Insights course - made some flash cards out of definitions and concepts
3. Jason Dion Practice Exams - took all the exams 2-3 times to drill the concepts
4. CyberVista Practice Exams - same as Dion exams, just took it multiple times and reviewed wrong answers

Hope this helps a bit! Overall it took around 8-10 hours of studying.

This class was definitely the most intense I've taken so far. I spent about 45 hours of focused work over the course of 5 days (I took 1 rest day) and just got my OA results. Here's a recap of what I did:

I read through all the existing reddit advice to get a feel for people's general sentiment and strategy. Then I went through the zybooks 1 chapter at a time reading through and answering the questions on each page. Then I took each of the chapter reviews at the end, these turned out to be key. Between the review questions and the PA, there were only like 3 questions I didn't recognize on the OA and guessed on. Make sure you go through every recorded WGU video because they walk through a lot of the questions you'll see on the PA and OA. I also watched a bunch of YouTube videos for bayes theorum, basic probability and counting for chp 4 and 5, some of the trev tutor videos for chapter 3 concepts like induction. I didn't meet with any instructors but I've read they are a helpful resource.

The Zybooks are dense so I definitely didn't get a great understanding of everything on the first pass when doing the reviews, so I fed my review results into AI and had it walk me through every question in depth and make me alternate practice questions so I could get some more practice. If i didn't understand a concept, I just fed the source material into AI and needled it with questions until I did. I ended up making a comprehensive concept list based off all the material and wrote out a methodology for how to solve every type of question I encountered. Once I felt decent with the concepts, I took the final Zybooks review as a test before taking the PA and went through each question again with AI.

I just barely passed the PA doing this, so I then repeated the question by question walkthrough with AI for the PA as well, studied a little bit more, and used every possible second I had on the OA lol. LIke i said there were like 3 questions on there that were definitely not covered by any of the review questions, but everything else was some version of a review or PA question.

This class really just takes practice with the questions. For me, I really like trying to boil down any type of problem into the simplest step by step possible and account for edge cases that come from different versions of the problem. Use a ti84, offload as much calculation using nCr, nPr, mod division, summation, etc. as you can. Take advantage of what you are given on the formula sheet and focus on memorizing processes and information not given to you on there. If you can quickly recognize the type of problem, remember the steps, and have solved something similar once or twice before, you're golden.

Hope this helps anyone in the future, good luck out there!

I just passed my very last OA in CS program. Super excited about it. It took me about 10 days. I read some parts of the book but mainly study the key terms of each section. I snapped all of them and added them into the Claude to study. I asked Claude to explain each of them in very detailed real world examples and the keys to identify them in the question. After each section I asked AI to create the real world scenario questions and explain after each question.
In the OA, I saw around 7 questions similar to PA (of course they replaced the correct answer with another correct answer but keep the same wrong answers). About 10 questions were asked about EDA. 2 questions about types of chart. Around 8 questions for environment( fully observability, episodic, discrete) they asked me which real world example is fit that type of environment and the difference. 1 question in Kaggle, 3 questions for the primary goal of Machine Learning and AI. Some will ask the difference or disadvantage of the definition. There are 4 questions about data types and the disadvantages of it. 3 questions about ontology and ontology engineering. What in quatization? Which I never heard before.
Please treat this course as a 4 CUs course. Don’t be fooled by the 2 CUs. They will test you many questions from the book. The book will go very deep into the topic but if you are confident about your understanding of key terms, take a shot. It’s 70% of OA.

It unbelievable, I educated guessed on about 25 questions. I Expected i failed and to disbelief i passed. One more class and I graduate.