Today I took the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Foundations Associate certification and passed with a score of 88%. Passing is 65%.
It’s a 60 minute exam with 40 questions. It look me way less than that (about 10 minutes). Each question is pick one of four multiple choice questions. In many questions one or two were clear distractors.
Why I took this certification
Oracle is doing a race to certification, where you can take a number of free certifications between now and Halloween. Unlike the Vector cert, which I took solely because it was free, this one I took both because it was free and to learn something. And I did. Some was new to me and some I used to know and forgot/
What I did:
- Watched videos and did skills checks from the free course. This was interesting. The skills check questions cover a good amount of the exam materials. I watched it on 2x speed. I also skipped most of the lab videos. I skipped a lot of the demos and focused on the concepts.
- Watched the video about preparing for the exam. It came with 7 practice questions which were useful for getting a feel for what to expect.
- Did practice exam. This was 40 questions in 60 minutes. it matched the real exam. The first time thru I got a 55%. (I didn’t review my notes at all) It was useful for knowing what I needed to remember. I took it immediately again and got a 93% which was more reflective of my real exam score.
The exam
All the questions were single answer multiple choice. Unlike the Vector exam, you didn’t have to sign up for a slot in advance. It didn’t seem proctored although hard to be sure. You also get 15 attempts at passing. I only used one but it seems like the goal is for people to pass and not to have a stringent test.
You get two free exam attempts with the promo and this exam didn’t use either of them. Looks like it is always free
I wrote a separate blog post about the exam engine. The battery indicator wasn’t there so maybe that was about the proctor’s machine?
After the exam
You get a score report on the screen right after submitting and an email right away with the same score. It took a little under an hour to get the second email saying my certview was updated.
What I found most interesting
The refresher on terms was good for me. The types of neural networks and when you use each was mostly new to me and interesting. There were good examples throughout. I also enjoyed seeing the capabilities of some of the Oracle products at a high level.
How to Study
The learning path is sufficient to take the exam if you go through it more carefully.