D198 Global Arts and Humanities, catalog number HUMN 1020, is the three-CU humanities requirement across WGU nursing and Health Information Management plans. The catalog describes it as a three-module survey examining the humanities in the Information Age and the global origins of music. Those two framings are what make this course different from a standard humanities survey, and building your work around them is the fastest route through it.
Two framings that decide what a good answer looks like
The first framing is the Information Age. That is a question about what happens to art, argument and cultural memory when reproduction and distribution become effectively free. It invites specific comparisons: a work encountered in a gallery against the same work on a screen, an argument that used to reach a hundred readers now reaching a million, a musical tradition preserved by a community now preserved by a recording.
The second framing is global origins, most explicitly for music. Its point is that the traditions treated as default in one place are local somewhere else, and that forms travel and combine. A response that treats one tradition as the standard and everything else as a variation has missed the framing, and rubrics that name global or cultural context are written to catch exactly that.
Together they produce a usable test for any paragraph you write in this course. Does this sentence show awareness that the work came from a particular place and time, and does it show awareness of how the work reaches its audience now? A paragraph that answers both is doing what the course asks.
D198 and legacy C100 are catalog pairs
WGU carries a second humanities course in the catalog. C100 Introduction to Humanities under HUMN 1010 is the legacy entry, using literature, visual and performing arts and philosophy to build writing, communication and critical thinking. D198 covers the same requirement with the global and Information Age framing, and it is the version current nursing and HIM plans use.
Study resources move between the two codes usefully, since the interpretive method is identical. What stays separate is the task material: rubrics and directions live inside each Course of Study and are not published, so build from the one attached to the code on your Degree Plan.
Reading the rubric into a module-by-module plan
Open your Course of Study before drafting. The catalog gives competencies; the rubric gives the scoring detail. Count the aspects, and note that each is judged independently on a three-point scale with a score of 2 in each passing the task. No aspect compensates for another, which matters in a three-module course where students often carry one module and coast through another.
A useful planning move is to map aspects to modules. If the course runs in three modules and your task covers all of them, check whether the aspects distribute evenly or whether one module carries most of the scoring. Students routinely spend equal effort on three modules when the assessment weight sits mostly in one.
A worked word budget. Take six scored aspects and directions asking for about 1,700 words. Reserve 130 for an opening naming the works and 130 for a close, leaving 1,440 across six aspects, or 240 each. Then move: the aspect asking you to analyse a work takes 350, and the aspect asking you to identify a period or tradition takes 130, because identification is complete when it is correct. The arithmetic still lands, and the paper now carries its weight where the reasoning lives.
A structure for a global humanities response
Where task directions set a format, follow it exactly. Where they leave the shape open, this order fits the course framing.
| Section | What belongs there | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Work and origin | The work, its creator or tradition, its period and its place of origin | Place named as specifically as the record allows |
| Cultural context | What the work meant where and when it was made | Function described, not just style |
| Formal features | Observable elements: rhythm, instrumentation, structure, materials, composition | Features named precisely enough to point at |
| Function | What the work was made to do: ritual, entertainment, protest, instruction | Purpose named from evidence rather than guessed |
| Interpretation | What those features do, and your claim about meaning | A claim built from the features rather than announced before them |
| Transmission | How the work reaches audiences now, and what that changes | A concrete difference, not a general remark about technology |
| Comparison | A second work or tradition, with the basis of comparison stated | A shared question or feature the two works answer differently |
| Sources | The works themselves plus commentary, in the required style | Recordings and performances cited as works, with performer and date |
The transmission row is where this course differs most from a standard humanities paper. Saying that a recording lets more people hear a tradition is generic. Saying that a recording fixes one performance of a tradition that was previously different every time, and that the fixed version becomes the reference, is the kind of specific observation an Information Age framing rewards.
Evidence craft for music and cross-cultural work
- Cite recordings properly. A piece of music has a composer or tradition, a performer, a recording date and a release, and all of them matter to what you heard.
- Point at moments. Use timestamps or section names so a reader can hear what you are describing. Vague references to a section read as claims you cannot support.
- Describe sound in usable terms. Speed, instrumentation, texture, repetition, call and response. These are observable and they carry analysis in a way that adjectives do not.
- Name the tradition accurately and check the name. Getting a regional or cultural label wrong undermines everything built on it, and the correction takes two minutes.
- Attribute cultural claims. Statements about what a practice means to a community come from sources, and unsourced generalisation is both a documentation problem and an accuracy risk.
- Prefer sources from within the tradition where they exist. A description written by practitioners is stronger evidence than a description written about them.
One habit distinguishes strong work here: state what you cannot know from your position as a listener or viewer. Acknowledging the limits of an outside perspective, in one sentence, reads as intellectual honesty and it prevents the confident overclaiming that cross-cultural writing invites.
What Competent looks like in D198
Work at WGU is recorded as Competent or Not Competent, with no letter grades and no ordinary grade point average. Performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no penalty for the earlier version, so a return costs time inside a six-month flat-rate term rather than standing.
Submissions that pass on the first read tend to show:
- Origin and context stated before interpretation begins.
- Formal features named precisely, with locations a reader can find.
- A claim about meaning that could not have been written without engaging the work.
- Comparison built on a stated basis rather than on proximity.
- Works, recordings and commentary all cited in the style the directions name.
Where your plan pairs this course with a proctored objective assessment, the rule is fixed. Proctored assessments are yours to sit. We prepare with concept work, listening guides, worked interpretations and timed practice, and we give an honest readiness read. We do not sit or assist during an assessment and we never ask for portal credentials.
Five mistakes that cost time in D198
- Treating one tradition as the default. The global framing exists precisely to prevent that, and rubrics touching cultural context are written to notice it.
- Describing music with adjectives. Beautiful and haunting are responses. Instrumentation, repetition and rhythmic pattern are evidence.
- Making a general point about technology. The Information Age framing wants a specific change to a specific work or practice, not a paragraph about the internet.
- Skipping the citation of recordings and performances. They are works with contributors and dates, and leaving them uncited costs a documentation aspect.
- Spreading effort evenly across three modules. Map the aspects first and put the hours where the scoring is.
How support works on this course
Send the rubric from your Course of Study and the task directions. What comes back is aspect-mapped: a model response with origin and context established, formal features pointed at precisely, a transmission observation that is specific rather than general, a comparison with a stated basis, and full citation for works and recordings, plus a walkthrough of the reasoning.
WGU terms run six months at a flat rate, so the number that lowers your cost per course is how many you close inside a term. Humanities is a course students in health programmes often leave until a term where clinical or practicum work is already heavy, which is the worst time for a writing-based course. Clearing it in a lighter term is usually the better trade.
Questions students ask about D198
Is D198 the same as HUMN 1020?
How does D198 relate to C100?
Do I need to read music to write about it?
Three modules of humanities in a clinical term?
Send the rubric and directions. You get a model response with context established, features pointed at precisely, and recordings cited properly.
Where D198 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 12 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.