Pluralsight Skills offers several types of assessments to help you before, during, and after learning.

Assessments overview

Skills offers four types of learner assessments: certification practice exams, learning checks, Skill IQ assessments, and Tech Foundations assessments. Each assessment type is used for different purposes during your learning journey.

Discovery

Before starting to learn, you can use assessment to:

• Skill IQ assessment to Measure your proficiency with a Skill IQ assessment. Use your resulting Skill IQ score to start at beginner, intermediate, or advanced content.
• Check your understanding in an emergent tech topic with a Tech Foundations assessment before watching the associated topic video.
• Test your current knowledge, if you’re preparing to sit a certification exam, with a certification practice exam. Use your results to decide where in a certification path (opens in new tab) you’d like to start.

Learning

While learning from Skills content, you can use some assessments to:

• Test your understanding in a course with a no-pressure learning check.
• Check your knowledge while using a path with a certification practice exam.

Testing

After you’ve finished some or all of the content for a topic, use assessments to:

• Reassess your Skill IQ with a retake and see how far you’ve come.
• Show your knowledge in a Tech Foundations topic and increase your Tech Foundations completion score with a Tech Foundations assessment.
• Check your knowledge and readiness for a certification exam with a practice exam.

Comparing assessment types

While assessment types have some overlap in features and functionality, each type is used for different purposes. See the chart below to compare each assessment type.

^{* Tech Foundations assessments require access to Tech Foundations↩}

^{† Tech Foundations assessments are scored pass/fail↩}

Certification practice exams

Certification practice exams are a study tool created to assist you in getting ready for a particular certification exam. Practice exams are based on their real counterparts and feature questions similar in topic and domain. The Skills library features practice exams created by Pluralsight in popular certification topics.

Each practice exam is timed to simulate the testing environment and is around the same length of the real exam. Results of practice exam attempts are visible to admins and/or managers.

Learn more in Certification practice exams.

Learning checks

Learning checks are a tool that lets you check your knowledge for a particular course. Each check consists of 6 – 12 multiple-choice questions with no timer or score. After taking the learning check, you’ll see which questions you missed but your score won’t be saved or added to analytics.

Learning checks are available in many Skills video courses and can be found, if available, on the course details page under the Learning Check tab.

Learn more about Learning checks.

Skill IQ assessments

Skill IQ assessments are intended to measure your proficiency in a technology skill in order to identify where you should start learning. A Skill IQ assessment consists of 20+ multiple-choice questions and is timed, each attempt taking approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Use the assessment’s result, or Skill IQ score, to determine where in a path you should start your learning journey. Your score is based on how you did on the assessment compared to others who took the same assessment. Remeasure your Skill IQ with a retake.

Admins and managers can see your Skill IQ range from novice to expert but won’t be able to see your specific Skill IQ score or the answers you selected.

Learn more about Skill IQ.

Tech Foundations assessments

Tech Foundations assessments are part of the curated learning experience of Tech Foundations. Each topic assessment is untimed and consists of 15 multiple-choice questions in a particular topic like artificial intelligence, sustainability, or cloud computing. You can take the assessment before and/or after watching the accompanying topic video.

After you take the assessment, you’ll be given a pass-fail score. You can take the assessment twice within a 24-hour period until you pass the assessment. Your manager and other admins can see if you’ve attempted an assessment and if you’ve passed or failed it, but won’t see which questions or areas of a topic you need to work on.

Learn more about Tech Foundations features.

Common questions and solutions

Use the following to solve common questions. See Introduction to Skill IQ for a glossary of terms.