How can I score exams that evaluate different topic areas?

If you create an exam that covers a wide variety of subjects, such as networking, security, and storage, we recommend creating more than one topic area. The topic areas of an exam organize your questions and ensure all exam takers have a baseline comprehension for each topic area of the exam in order to pass.

Content Engine lets you to set a minimum score for each topic area in order to pass the exam.

Use the following steps to set the minimum score for the topic areas in an exam:

1. Edit the exam in Content Engine.
2. On the Exam Settings tab, scroll down to the Advanced Settings heading and click it to open.
3. Click Add a new topic area and then select or create a topic area covered by the exam. Repeat this step for each topic area covered by this exam.
4. For each topic area, move the sliders to indicate:
• The percentage of the exam questions that cover this topic area
• The percentage of those topic area questions that the test taker must get right to pass the exam

The following graphic shows what several topic areas as their associated sliders might look like:

Note: As you continue the process of creating this exam, the system will require you to select enough questions for each topic area to match the percentages you have specified.

In the example above, all the following conditions need to be true for the exam taker to pass the exam:

• At least 70% of the overall questions need to be correct.
• At least 35% AWS Billing and Pricing related questions need to be correct.
• At least 35% of AWS Technology related questions need to be correct.
• At least 35% Cloud Concepts related questions need to be correct.
• At least 35% AWS Security related questions need to be correct.

These requirements are visible to the exam taker prior to starting the exam:

Additionally, you can change the scoring weight from Default to Medium or Hard.

This setting gives a skipped question a different weight than a wrong answer to penalize guessing.