This article includes a video that provides an overview of The PM Exam Simulator and how to start an exam.
Video
Transcript
Introduction [00:00]
After logging in to the website, you are taken to the Welcome page from where you have two options to get into the simulator of your choice. You can either click on the dropdown menu here and select the exam simulator that you would like to go to, or on the Welcome page, you will find a link to the appropriate simulator as well.
And I'm going to go into the CAPM Simulator to get us started. Here, you can see that we have four regular CAPM exams, and we have one ITTO-based exam that stands for inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs from the PMBOK® Guide.
And then when we switch over to the PMP Exam Simulator, you can see that we have eight regular exams for the PMP exam and one ITTO-based exam for the PMP here. Obviously, I'm an exceptional student. Most students will only have access to one simulator at a time because it doesn't make sense to be studying for both at the same time.
PMP Exam List Page [01:12]
In any case, we are going to be starting Exam number one here, and I'm going to intentionally, however, click on PMP Exam 2 right now. And now I see, ‘Oh my, I have started the wrong exam. I wanted to start Exam 1. I've started Exam 2, not a problem. Click on Close Window, and the system will simply take you back to the previous page. Now we can click on Exam 1 and it opens up in a separate window. I'm going to make this full screen here so that we can see everything a little better.
Starting Exam [01:47]
To move forward, I am clicking on “Start,” and now the countdown timer begins. You can see it here at the top left with four hours. Let's take a look at the screen and what we see. So the countdown timer, we've already seen just below that. It says “Question 1 of 200” here for the PMP Exam. The number of questions that are displayed are obviously dependent on the exam type that you are practicing for.
Question Page [02:17]
On the right hand side, we have two buttons, the “Show Grid” and the “Mark” button. We'll look at those in just a moment. Below that is the Question ID. That's the internal identification number of this particular question in the Simulator.
The big gray box that you see in the center, that is the question. Here, we have a question with an image and below that you have four answer choices, A, B, C, D, and your task is to select the best one, the most appropriate answer to the question. On the left hand side on the bottom, there is the “End Exam” button. And on the right hand side is the “Next” button.
Selecting Answer [03:04]
Let's select an answer at random. I'm going to just select A here and I'm clicking on a “Next.” And now you will notice that there is also a “Previous” button. “Previous” button is only shown if there is a previous question, and obviously when you are on question 200, “Next” will disappear.
And now, it is pretty straightforward. You read the question, you select the best answer choice. ‘A, no, wait A isn’t correct. B is correct. No, I think C is correct.’ So you can change your opinion as often as you like. And once you have made your selection, you click on “Next.” If however, you are uncertain on this question here, “Which of the following is not an enterprise environmental factor?” Oh, stakeholder risk tolerances, could be! It could be “Stakeholder Risk Tolerances” here, but I'm not sure. So I'm going to mark this question for later review and we'll see how exactly that is to be used in just a moment. But I want to go to the next question here, and I want to select C right here.
Review Grid [04:13]
And now we're going to get into the review grid by clicking on the “Show Grid” button. The review grid gives you an overview of all 200. In this particular case, questions in the exam. And you can clearly see which ones are answered, which ones are not answered. By scrolling down all the way to the bottom, you will find the legend of how to read this review grid.
Remember that I marked question number three? I can now see here that this question is marked even though I have selected answer C. Once you have taken 200 questions and you have a number of them marked, it's very easy to go back here into this mode and find the questions that you have marked.
Unanswered Questions [05:04]
You can also find the questions here that you have unanswered. To show you how exactly that works, let me skip a few here. So we have five, six, and seven. We're going to not answer, but I'm going to click here on Question 8. And I'm going to answer Question 8 right now, and I'm going to click on “Next.” I'm also answering Question 9 randomly here, and going back into the “Show Grid,” here we go.
And now we can see that I have five, six questions that I have answered and 194 unanswered. The moment I'm clicking on this “Show Unanswered” button here, the Unanswered mode has started with the big blue bar here at the top. The system tells me that 194 are at this point unanswered. And you can now see that one to four have disappeared and eight and nine, which I have answered here, they have also disappeared from the grid. And obviously when I go to question number five, this is now the first one in the system. There's only a “Next” button here. And it also tells me 194 unanswered. If I select now a random question, this will now change to 193 unanswered. And in this way I can work my way through all the unanswered questions. Turning this off, simply go back to this mode and select “Show All Unanswered” questions.
Ending Exam [06:30]
Alright! I am satisfied now. I want to end this exam. I am clicking on the “End Exam” button. The system obviously now tells me, hey, you have marked questions. You have unanswered questions. Are you sure you want to end the exam? Yes, I'm sure I want to end the exam.
After the exam has ended, the examination report is shown to me. It displays all 200 questions one after the other, giving me an overview of the answer choices that I've had and whether or not it was correct or not.
Details and Explanations [07:07]
I can now click on the individual buttons that you see here in front to go to question number two and find out, well, why is B correct and not C. There is an explanation. There is a reference. There is a hint right there. We also have the option to mark the difficulty or to leave feedback via the “Live Feedback” button. We have separate videos for these separate how-to videos that show you how this is done.
Closing [07:36]
Back to the results! Once I am satisfied with this, I can simply go to the bottom of the screen and close the window, which will take me back to the overview page here. And if I want to open it up again, that report or my mouse over “My Recent Results” and click on the first one that will open it up again.