Exams and assessment
How do you prepare and publish a practice exam in Course?
In Course, a practice exam is defined by its name, institution, optional brand, exam type, date, and duration. Its subject structure records the number of questions in each subject. When an answer key is provided, student responses can be evaluated against it.
A new exam starts as a draft. Publishing it from the Practice Exams screen changes its status and enables the result-entry flow. Publishing here does not make the exam a public web page or expose it to search engines.
On this page
How exam settings affect results
Saving duration and rule settings does not by itself establish that every online proctoring behavior is enforced. This page covers exam setup and result evaluation; it makes no claim of camera supervision or guaranteed prevention of cheating.
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Subject structure | Sets question counts by subject and maps consecutive questions to those subjects. |
| Answer key | Allows student marks to be evaluated as correct, incorrect, or blank. |
| Wrong-answer penalty | Determines the deduction per incorrect answer when calculating net results. |
| Total question count | When defined, provides the denominator used to calculate the score. |
| Exam status | Allows result entry through the published-exam flow. |
Can you use an exam without an answer key?
Yes. Without an answer key, you can use quick entry to record each student's correct, incorrect, and blank totals by subject. To evaluate a sequence of answers question by question, define an answer key first.
When adding a key later, check the existing subject structure and question numbers. If the same subject appears in more than one section, the combined question counts and their order matter. An incomplete or misordered key can lead to incorrect result evaluation.
What should you check after publishing?
A published exam provides access to result entry and the results list. An exam can be archived and later republished from the archive; those actions change its status. Check its current status before entering results.
If the wrong-answer penalty or total question count changes, existing results have their net results and scores recalculated from stored correct and incorrect counts, and the exam rankings are updated. Do not assume that changing an answer key automatically reevaluates every previously stored student mark; review the affected results separately.
Frequently asked questions
Can you enter results for a draft exam?
The current result-entry flow requires a published exam. Check the exam definition, then publish it before entering results.
Is an answer key required?
No key is needed for quick entry of correct, incorrect, and blank totals. A key is required to evaluate an answer sequence question by question.
Does publishing make the exam visible on Google?
No. Publishing changes the exam's status inside Course. It does not publish a public web page or submit the exam to a search engine.
Assess how Course fits your institution's workflow
Explore the features described on this page in your account, or discuss your institution's needs with our team.