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.

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.