WGU D188: The Collaborative Leader

WGU D188, titled The Collaborative Leader, is a graduate course in WGU's School of Education. You will most often meet it inside the Master of Science in Curriculum and Instruction and related education master's programs, and you may still see it referenced by its older course code, OOM1. Its whole purpose is practical: education is a team sport, and this course asks you to show that you can lead and contribute to collaboration that actually improves teaching and learning.

Direct answer: D188 is not a timed multiple-choice exam. You pass it by completing a set of written performance tasks that each answer a rubric, using a real (or realistic) instructional goal and honest reflection. Read each rubric aspect first, address every one explicitly with concrete examples from your own teaching context, and cite your sources correctly.

Because it is assessment by performance rather than by a proctored objective test, D188 rewards a different skill than most undergraduate courses do. There is no cramming a fact sheet the night before. Instead, you are graded on how clearly and completely you plan collaboration, carry it out or describe carrying it out, and evaluate what worked. If you are an anxious adult learner juggling a classroom job and family, the good news is that this is a course you can largely control: the rubric tells you exactly what "done" looks like.

What the performance tasks ask of you

D188 is organized around a small number of written tasks, each targeting a different circle of collaboration in a school setting. Public course listings consistently describe them along these lines:

• Collaborating with colleagues on instruction — identifying a shared instructional goal and planning how you and your team members will work together to improve teaching and learning around it.
• Contributing to the professional development of peers — showing how you help colleagues grow, whether through coaching, sharing practice, or structured professional learning.
• Partnering with families and the wider community — extending collaboration beyond the staffroom to engage families and community stakeholders in enriching student learning.
• Reflection and evaluation — across the tasks, you are asked to reflect: what did the collaboration achieve, how did you use feedback, and what would you do differently next time.

Underneath these tasks sit familiar collaboration and leadership ideas — team development and group dynamics, communication, conflict resolution, shared decision-making, and using data or feedback to guide next steps. You do not need to memorize theorists, but grounding your writing in recognized frameworks strengthens it.

How demanding is it, and how long should you budget?

Many students report that D188 is moderate in difficulty: not conceptually hard, but writing-heavy and detail-sensitive. The friction is rarely the ideas; it is meeting every single rubric aspect and getting the formatting and citations right so the task is not returned for revision. Students frequently describe finishing in a couple of weeks of focused effort, and sometimes faster if they already have a live instructional goal to write about.

Treat those timelines as encouragement, not a promise. Your pace depends on how much you write comfortably, whether English-language academic writing is second nature, and how quickly the evaluation queue turns around a submission. Build in time for at least one revision cycle, because that is normal, not a sign of failure.

A rubric-first plan for preparing and writing

Performance tasks reward a different study method than objective exams, so adapt the usual active-learning tactics to writing:

• Reverse-outline from the rubric. Before writing a word of prose, copy each rubric aspect into a document as its own heading. Your draft is complete only when every heading has a substantive paragraph beneath it. This is the single highest-leverage habit in the whole course.
• Anchor everything to one real instructional goal. Pick a genuine goal from your classroom, grade team, or building — improving reading comprehension, say, or a math intervention. A concrete case makes every task easier to write and far more convincing than a hypothetical.
• Use retrieval and spacing on the frameworks, not the tasks. Spend short, spaced sessions recalling the collaboration and leadership concepts (stages of team development, feedback loops, community engagement models) so you can reference them fluently. You are not being quizzed, but naming the right idea signals mastery.
• Draft, then self-assess as an evaluator would. After a draft, reread it against the rubric line by line and mark any aspect you only half-answered. Practice testing here means grading your own paper before a WGU evaluator does.
• Lean on the course materials and your Course Instructor. The provided learning resources and task templates exist to be used, and a quick call with your Course Instructor to confirm you have interpreted a task correctly can save a whole revision cycle.

Where students trip up

Most returned tasks in D188 fail for avoidable reasons rather than weak thinking:

• Answering the topic instead of the rubric. Writing a good general essay on collaboration will still be sent back if it skips a required aspect. Address each aspect by name.
• Staying abstract. Vague statements about "working together" score poorly. Name the colleagues or stakeholders, the goal, the actions, and the outcome.
• Thin reflection. The reflection is graded work, not a courtesy. Say specifically how you used feedback and what you would change.
• Citation and originality slips. Support claims with properly cited sources and write everything in your own words. Never submit another student's task from a document-sharing site; that is an academic-integrity violation, not a shortcut.
• Ignoring the template and formatting cues. When a task provides a structure, use it. Missing sections read as missing rubric aspects.

D188 Readiness Checklist

Before you submit, work through these self-checks:

• Can you state, in one sentence, the specific instructional goal your tasks are built around?
• Can you point to a paragraph in your draft that addresses every single rubric aspect, by name?
• Can you describe the actual collaboration steps — who, what, and how — rather than speaking in generalities?
• Can you explain how you contributed to a colleague's professional growth with a concrete example?
• Can you show how families or the community were engaged to enrich learning?
• Can you reflect on what the collaboration achieved and what you would do differently, using feedback you received?
• Can you confirm every source is cited correctly and the writing is entirely your own?
• Can you say that your submission follows any required template or formatting exactly?

FAQ

Is D188 an objective exam or a performance assessment?

It is a performance assessment. Rather than sitting a proctored multiple-choice test, you complete written tasks that are each scored against a rubric, so there is no fixed question count or passing percentage to worry about.

How hard is The Collaborative Leader?

Many students report it is moderate: the concepts are approachable, but success depends on carefully meeting every rubric requirement and writing clearly. The challenge is thoroughness and detail, not difficult theory.

How long does D188 usually take?

It varies with your writing speed and evaluation turnaround, but students commonly finish within a couple of weeks of steady effort. Budget extra time for at least one revision cycle, which is a normal part of performance-assessment courses.

Why do I sometimes see this course called OOM1?

OOM1 is a legacy course code for the same content. If your program or older study materials reference OOM1, you are looking at The Collaborative Leader under its earlier designation.

Do I need to be a practicing teacher to complete the tasks?

The tasks are written for an education context and are far easier when you can draw on a real school setting or instructional goal. If you are not currently teaching, work with your Course Instructor on how to frame a realistic scenario that still satisfies the rubric.

What is the best way to study for a course like this?

Turn the rubric into your outline, anchor every task to one concrete instructional goal, and self-assess your draft against each aspect before submitting. If you want to strengthen the underlying theory, the WGU guides on D566 Psychology of Learning, D293 Assessment and Learning Analytics, and D184 Standards-Based Assessment pair well with the collaboration and improvement themes here. You can browse more education courses on the School of Education hub or the full all-guides index. For official course details, check the program page on wgu.edu.