How Many Attempts Does Taskstream Give You?

As a student of WGU, WGU Indiana, or any WGU state college, you need to become very familiar with Taskstream. Not only is Taskstream the place where you will take all of your performance assessments as opposed to your objective assessments, it is also the place where you will develop and house your professional portfolio.

Navigating Taskstream is simple enough and you can find some great Taskstream tips on this blog, but you need to understand how it works for your particular program. While WGU Indiana does not have a GPA, they do have scoring standards. Those scoring standards change with your level in the program.

• You have 4 total attempts for each task. You will have your original submission and then 3 attempts to complete any revisions with the required scores.
• If you are completing a task with a 3 level rubric, you need to score a "2" or "satisfactory" on each portion of the task. Even if you score a "3" in every portion but one, you will not pass. These are competency based courses that are aimed at developing your understanding of individual elements, rather than being aimed at cultivating an average score. Success in all portions is mandatory.
• If you are completing a task with a 5 level rubric and you are taking a lower level course that will be marked with an asterisk you will again need to score a "2" in each portion, indicating that the level of performance is minimally competent. These will be the courses that may not be a part of your core program, such as general education courses.
• If you are completing a task with a 5 level rubric and it is part of your core area of study or you are working on the graduate program, you need to succeed with a score of "3" or higher.

Taskstream is not difficult to navigate if you take it sept by step and use it along with your course resources to complete each portion of the assignment. You can also  speak with your class mentor or community if you need more help understanding specific tasks.

Citation Tips

When you are creating a research paper for Taskstream, you are going to need to cite your work from time to time. There are a few things you need to keep in mind so that your references page and your in text citations are done correctly.

• All of the citations I've done for WGU Indiana are in APA format. If you aren't in the Teachers College then you may need to use a different format. Your Taskstream instructions will always note at the bottom what type of format you need to use when citing text. Purdue OWL is a great place to start since it offers detailed information about how to accurately cite work, as well as samples so you can see how it should look on the paper.
• The picture here is for fun and irony. Wikipedia is not a quality source to cite. However, it is a great place to start. You can get an idea of what you need to know through Wikipedia and you can even find some great sources there. Click on the number by the word or phrase you want to source if there is one next to it. You can also simply scroll to the bottom for the list of references that are usually viable sources. Assess the source yourself to determine if it is a quality source, but never cite Wikipedia.
• No more than 30% of your work can be from another source. That's almost a third of your paper. No, you can't create the majority of your paper out of citations. 
• You don't always need citations, but you will never get flagged for using them. Your Taskstream instructions will tell you if you need to include citations. Not all papers require them. However, no one is going to complain if you use them when you don't have to. On some occasions students have had their work sent back because they didn't use citation, even though the instructions did not require them. You can avoid this issue by including in the paper or as a note to the reviewer the words "No references were used. All information was obtained through my own experience." This can be included in the pop-up window that opens as you submit your work.

Taskstream Tips

If you go to WGU, WGU Indiana, or another school that used Taskstream, you have no doubt found that some days it just doesn't make sense. If you don't go to any of these schools, I suggest you check them out and don't forget to use the code IND1 for waiving the WGU Indiana application fee. You're welcome. Now on to some tips...

Directions
First of all, it seems to work best if you actually print out the task instructions. Then you can take notes, check off the elements as you complete them, and have a ceremonially burning when it gets accepted. The directions don't always seem clear, so be sure to make use of your mentor for that class. While they don't grade the tasks, they are well versed in exactly what is expected. Also be sure to use the course details where you can get step by step explanation of what is expected from the task.

Submission
Submit your work in .rtf format to avoid issues. In some cases you are asked to use multi-media as the format. You might assume you have to use a slideshow or video, but you can also use things like a blog. Don't be afraid to think outside the box. I'm a freelance writer so working with a blog takes away the element of anxiety that other formats create for me.

References
Many tasks ask you to indicate your references in APA format. Yet you may be using knowledge you gained through your own experience. If you don't have any references, indicate that at the bottom of your page or in the message box that appears before the work is actually submitted. A simple "No references were used as the resource was my own experience" can go a long way toward avoiding losing points because you didn't provide a reference page.

Revisions
You have as many revisions as there are elements of the task. So if there are 3 elements, you can have up to 3 revisions. There are a few things to keep in mind when you do revisions. These things will help you get them back faster and may promote a higher quality of work.

• When you first do your task, do it as you understand it best. Skip over the intimidation of the task by reminding yourself that you will have a chance to revise it if needed and the errors will be pointed out in detail.
• Highlight the  changes. The process seems to go faster if you highlight the changes that you made. I imagine that the graders have access to past reports and may just look for the changes if you let them know the changes are highlighted. Otherwise they have to comb through the entire thing all over again. When you resubmit, use the message box that pops up right before you resubmit to let the grader know the changes are highlighted.
• Resubmit all documents. It doesn't matter if you didn't have to revise all the documents. Resubmit all of them. They may not go to the same person for review, which means that a document which has already been reviewed might get reviewed again and not submitting it could mean you will have to go through the process all over again.

Tips for Education Degrees at WGU Indiana

I'm about to wrap up my BA with WGU Indiana. The experience has been good enough for me to decide that I wanted to continue on with WGU Indiana and get my Masters through them. At the moment I'm considering the Biology Education program because I love biology and I know science is a high-need area in the field of education. Because I am about to receive my BA in Elementary Education as well as Special Education and I plan to teach in Indiana, I thought I would offer some tips for those who are going through the same, or similar program at WGU Indiana.

• When you apply for your license to teach, don't forget to click on the "out of state" portion of the application. WGU Indiana is a state school, but they are still going back to WGU for the credentials on that end.
• Tasks get through Taskstream much faster if you make the changes stand out. I personally go over mine with yellow to make it easier for the graders. In fact, I found that this worked well when I got a task back for changes, but didn't actually change anything. They had somehow missed what they were looking for. I made it easier to see and the task went through.
• Attend the makeup cohort meetings, even if you didn't miss any. There is some really valuable information offered in those!
• Go over the items for your portfolio before actually using it. Just because something got through Taskstream, don't assume it is perfect, especially if you made changes and made them stand out.
• To submit your portfolio, click on "attachments" like you would for any other assignment. Instead of clicking on "browse" after that, click on "get items from folio" right below it. (The task and the resources both leave that info out of the instructions.)

And one more thing...stalking Taskstream does not help your items get reviewed any faster. I know it's almost impossible to stop, so just walk away from the computer. (All kidding aside, it is almost impossible to stop stalking them, but we probably aren't doing ourselves any favors by slowing down their servers with our compulsive hitting of the "refresh" key.)