Hello to everybody. Thank you to all the presenters that have arrived already, but also a huge welcome to our External Examiners. This is the University of Derby External Examiner induction. My name is Laura Waldram and I'm a Quality Monitoring Manager working within the Centre for Quality Assurance here at Derby. So, if well, I introduced Richard last year as the man of the hour. So, I thought I've got to try and top it a little bit this year. So, this is our King of Quality, Richard Monk. So, I'm going to hand the floor to him and thank you, Richard, I'll let you crack on. Thank you.
Thank you for that, Laura. I'm not sure I can live up to that billing, actually, I'm afraid. So, as Laura said, I'm Head of Quality, so I head up the Centre for Quality Assurance. Many of my colleagues are involved in delivering the induction today. But first off, I'd really like to thank all of our External Examiners, all of you for attending today, and for taking on the role. It's greatly appreciated and as a, as an institution, we really value the role that our External Examiners play and the role that you all play in maintaining standards and the quality of our provision. So, thank you for your time this morning.
My slides, I'm just going to run through a brief sector overview and some of the regulatory requirements that relate to your role as External Examiners. There's obviously quite a lot of change in terms of the role of our regulator, the Office for Students. Several recent consultations, including the one that's live at the moment, which is a consultation around the sort of future approach to quality regulation. So, they're consulting on fundamentally significant changes to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and in in terms of bringing that together with some of their other quality regulation around student outcomes and other quality assessments into a more integrated system, rather than having different reviews for different types of regulatory area. So, the idea is that they will focus much more on what they call the B conditions, the quality and standards conditions within a revised version of the Teaching Excellence Framework. The reason for mentioning this now is because this will come into effect during your tenure as External Examiners particularly if you're new to the role this year. I'll get on to that on the subsequent slide. So really there, as you can see, there their proposals are focusing on um strengthening incentives and interventions. So, they're still talking about rating institutions bronze, silver and gold according to different quality metrics around student outcomes and student experience. They want to involve students more directly in the process, so helping to guide and decide on TEF ratings. And fundamentally this was around a sort of government directive to the Office for Students to reduce burden by bringing together a lot of their quality regulation into into one integrated system. And there will be that continued focus on whether providers meet or exceed their minimum requirements and that will link to the ratings. If we just move on to the next slide, please.
So, this particular consultation runs until December. There'll be a second related consultation this time next year. During the first cycle they will very much focus on undergraduate provision but then moving in subsequent cycles to look at postgraduate taught provision and possibly even beyond that into some partner provision in the UK and overseas. Again, it will bring in student outcomes regulation to this revised TEF and we're looking at a a sort of launch date for this new regulatory process of 2027-28, so within within the time of your tenure as External Examiners. So, some providers will be in that first year, other providers with current silver and gold TEF ratings would be in 28/29, 29/30. So, again still within your tenure as External Examiners. And the reason for bringing this to your attention is because there will be a significant focus on student outcomes and as External Examiners a key part of your role is external moderation of student assessed work and overview of student outcomes achieved on on the programmes and modules that you're responsible for. So again, all providers will be expected to go through this process, and all providers will be rated over that first cycle. They're looking to drive improvement by incentivising strong performance. So that final bullet point there, summarizes some of the proposals within their potentially things like regulating student numbers in future if providers are not delivering good student outcomes or demonstrating poor quality.
So, if we just move on to the next, please. So just a couple of relevant points that have come out from the Office for Students recently. So, they've also recently consulted on strengthened regulation for sub-contractual arrangements, partnership arrangements, franchising as is commonly referred to. There are concerns within government and within the regulator around the quality of some partnership provision. So, if you're an External Examiner that's been appointed to look at some of our provision with partners in the UK or overseas, there's a particular focus on on provision delivered with partners currently, particularly around standards around quality of outcomes achieved by students. So that's something to be mindful of if you're engaging with us as an External Examiner with some of our partners. And also, so something just just last week actually, the Office for Students published a report focusing on graduate attainment and grade inflation. This has been a longstanding area of focus and concern for the regulator, and what the report they've recently published gave some specific examples of practice that some providers have within their regulations that could be seen to be inflationary. So, a couple of specific examples would be discounting of modules from the final degree classification, and also the use of multiple calculation methods to to determine what a student's final classification method would be. So just to be clear, we don't have either of those practices in our regulations. But many providers across the sector do. So that's an area that many institutions will have to reflect on their regulations and and consider whether they fall in line with best practice. So that's a particular and it's an ongoing concern something that you may see in your role as External Examiners as as sort of safeguarding academic standards is is critical in this area. So, it's particular area of focus for the regulator.
So, if we could just move on, please. So, we'll just move through these relatively quickly. So, these are the current B conditions for quality and standards set out by the Office for Students and I've picked these out because they're directly relevant to your role as External Examiners.
So, condition B1 is academic experience, and it's, and it expects that as a as an institution all of our courses, all of our, all our modules should be up to date. So, in terms of being in line with current research and thinking in the subject area programmes should provide a degree of educational challenge. So, increasing challenge as students’ progress through levels of study. Obviously, programmes should be coherently designed, delivered effectively to students, so they can achieve positive outcomes and then allow them to develop relevant skills during the course of their programme. So, during the course of your work as External Examiners, we'd obviously very much value your commentary in your reports around aspects of programme design and delivery as it relates to condition B1.
Condition B3 I've talked about previously. So, there's a relentless focus within the Office for Students around positive outcomes for students, institutions delivering good outcomes for students through good teaching, good program design and good delivery. So particularly focusing on continuation. So, students continuing from one year to the next, on-time completion of of their degrees, and then progression onto graduate level employment. So again, important to your work as an External Examiner when you're looking at student outcomes.
We just move on to the next slide please. So, condition B4 is assessment and awards. That relates directly to what I said previously about the Office for Students concerns around sort of attainment and grade inflation. So, they do expect that students are assessed effectively. So that means the assessment tasks that are set for students assess them effectively but they're also valid and reliable assessment tasks. So, in your role when you're carrying out assessment verification, looking at draft assessments and commenting on them, that's a key point at which you know your judgment as experts in your subject area will be key in terms of advising us as to whether our assessments are valid and reliable are an appropriate assessment for that level of study. And again, what I've mentioned before about academic regulations, the Office for Students are key. Obviously, it matters that our regulations are secure, they don't, they don't inflate grades for students and they follow best practice. So, those two points are critical and again that's about ensuring that awards delivered to students are appropriate and reflect appropriately their attainment. So, when you're involved in exam boards or moderation of student work, are those standards comparable with standards you're familiar with elsewhere, at your own institution, and other places where you may have been External Examiner. So that's a key part of your role and again that relates to B5 which is about sector recognized standards. So that's about comparability of standards across the sector. And that's another critical part of your role as External Examiners. Are our standards comparable with others? Do our regulations support the delivery of appropriate standards? Again, that's why it was, I thought, it was worth highlighting these particular conditions as they relate to your role.
So, if we could just move on to the next slide, please. Just very briefly many of you will probably be aware that the Quality Assurance Agency, the quality code has sort of been decoupled from the Office for Students Regulatory Framework, and the QAA are no longer the designated quality body working for the Office for Students. The regulator has brought all of that quality assurance in house. However, the QAA continues to exist as a membership organisation. It still publishes the quality code, which is a very, you know, a very helpful detailed reference points, a reference point for quality and standards and we we're still committed to its use as an institution, Particularly the role of External Examiners. You know, we we view the role of external examiners as as a critical part of quality assurance and maintaining our academic standards. So, we we clearly value your role and we're very grateful to you for taking it on. So, that's a continued focus for us. We continue to believe in the importance of the external examining system.
So, if we just move on, I think I might be on my last slide now. Just very briefly because I'm aware that Professor Neil Fowler will pick up on this more in his slides. Laura's mentioned obviously us as the Centre for Quality Assurance, we have a monitoring and evaluation strand, which Laura is a part of. They will support you as External Examiners throughout your time with us.
Just a couple of things are happening at the university at the moment. So, we're we're sort of embarking on a major transformation programme, particularly focusing on our academic delivery model, how we deliver our programmes, the credit structure, looking at potentially a block delivery approach. Within that, we're also looking at how we might best embed industry and employer engagement opportunities within our programmes, and also about how we can better embed employability skills, development and assessment within our programmes for the future. And then also how we can improve our digital capability, part of which obviously we've moved forward with our quality monitoring platform which Paula will talk to you about in a bit, but we're looking at a lot of other digital enhancements to how we, how we manage our programmes. So, I'll let Neil talk about some of those things in more detail. But I think that's the end of my slide. So, thank you for your time and thank you for listening.
Thank you Richard and I think the baton does pass to me. So, I will add my welcome to those that have already been shared by Laura and Richard and also my thanks for taking on the External Examining role with us; it is one that we hold great stall by, an important part of the infrastructure of higher education in that we are still a peer-to-peer and peer supported way of working and so maintaining that quality link is a really important part of what we do. I have always thoroughly enjoyed being an External Examiner and found it to be an incredibly rewarding task; certainly not rewarding on the financial side as I am sure you will have seen from your offers letter, but it is the joy of what you get to learn as you go along that process. So I hope that by engaging with us you find value out of the engagement you have with us as much as we will value the contribution that you make for all the reasons that Richard was just explaining in terms of that maintenance of quality and standards across the institution and across the sector at a time when those processes are under increasing external scrutiny and pressure.
So, I think you know it is a really important time for us to be working with our Externals, to be demonstrating to those who would like to denigrate the sector that this is a robust and meaningful process. We do welcome your full and constructive engagement in that process.
A few things that I would like to share with you this morning, Richard kind of shone the light forwards a little bit to some of where we are going with transformation and I will pick up on those elements towards the back end but I will start with the here and now. I've been at the university for just coming up for four years now and one of the first tasks that I was given when I moved into the university was to look at our learning and teaching strategy as it was at the point when I arrived, which was a perfectly worthy and lovely document that was probably not have been unfamiliar with you in terms of comparing it to your learning and teaching strategies within your own institution. It had some Derby specific features to it, particularly reflecting the university's commitment to transformation through education and social mobility, values that we hold dearly here at the university and all of the work that we do is focused upon that; much of it was very familiar and fair. I took the decision quite early on that I did not want to produce another document that looked like that because my experience across the sector was that institutions have these worthy strategies but they do not ever necessarily really impact upon the day-to-day delivery, they tended, and certainly ours did, to be very high on input with lots of instructions about how we should do things but not a lot on agency or impact that we were hoping for the strategy to have. So, when I took on the mantle I started a series of consultations across the institution about the creation of frameworks rather than strategies and for these to set out our key principles of what are we seeking to achieve and what are we asking our academic experts in each of their areas to sort of be able to articulate as the common Derby experience – ‘your’ education at Derby will contain the following things but that would be nuanced to the particular student groups that we were looking at; the modes of delivery, the subject specialisms that we were working with. So, we created two frameworks; a learning teaching assessment framework and a curriculum design framework, essentially separated out the what and the how of the composition of our academic provision. Because I'm a fairly simple person, I like these documents to be short and sweet, they are much more likely to be read if they can be summarised onto a single page as once the document gets above about five pages you can guarantee that most people will not read it, those that do, most of them will not remember it. So our curriculum design framework is very straightforward, it consists of four things and that is a requirement for all of our provision to be aligned to our research and knowledge exchange themes and we have six broad themes across the institution that are pan disciplinary in their nature and they form the bedrock of our link and our research and knowledge exchange strategy as would be manifest through REF and KEF so our outward industry engagement and our, sort of, pure research focus, as it comes through REF but they are not unique to single disciplines, they are very deliberately pan-disciplinary in their nature and, as a desire that all of our programmes should be underpinned by research that we are engaged with and industry engagement that we are undertaking, that personal development should be embedded, this focus on creating graduates who are ready to move into their chosen future. I have worked quite hard not to talk about career ready because not all of our graduates will want to move into a career, many of them may choose to become entrepreneurs, some of them will want to have portfolio careers but they are embedded with the skills that will allow them to shape their own futures as they go forward. That we have a focus on education for sustainable development that should be reflected through in the taught provision and how we are capturing essentially our reference point here is the UN sustainable development goals so not just a narrow focus upon environmental sustainability, albeit that is an important part of this work but that it also captures aspects of social and economic sustainability across the breadth of those UN sustainable development goals. In line with our social mobility focus that we are proactively inclusive, i.e. we are not reactive in our inclusion, that we apply universal design principles, that we seek to remove barriers to success at the time of designing our provision so that manifests more widely in university policy and all that we do, and we made a change in the year just gone, so sort of the first years who were with us last year with the first cohort to experience one of our changes in our support systems and we made a radical shift in our use of student support plans last year because of the work we had done about inclusive design and we removed a number of what had previously been universal elements that were included in every support plan; addition extensions for all forms of course work for all students who had a support plan as an example were removed from those as a standard adaptation. The opportunity for extensions remains where a student has a particular set of circumstances that means giving them extensions on deadlines is the right adaptation for them, then that right remains and we still include that in a number of plans but it is not a universally adopted change. We were finding that for many students, it was just deferring their ability to engage with assessment; they got later feedback and it disrupted their learning rather than helped their learning. It was interesting to note that last year there was a greater improvement in outcomes for students with a declared disability than there was for those without, in the cohorts who would have been affected by that change in our strategy. We know it is having a positive impact this approach to inclusive design so that is what should be going into the programmes. Our principles around learning, teaching and assessment, of the how that we are doing this summarised by five simple factors of success as I would describe them; a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, self-efficacy, resilience and engagement. It was for teams to articulate how they were achieving these elements, how was that being manifest in their approach to all levels of design of the provision and you could take those principles and apply them to individual learning activities, for example, how are you making your session on Tuesday morning at 9:00, what are you doing in that to build belonging, purpose, efficacy, etc., how are you designing your module, how, across the totality of your module are these things being manifest and finally, at a program level, what's the collective influence of this across all of the modules within this program bringing these things together.
We accept that there's an interdependence between these things, that it's not unique factors but the impact upon having programmes that deliver against these factors of success. We have a mapping document that shows how they intersect with each other to have a snowball effect on student success. I hope that when you meet with your programme teams and when you look at the modules for which you will be responsible you will be able to see these being manifest in what teams are doing. We haven't asked the programme teams to map every activity, so you won't necessarily see those words used in module specifications or assessment specs, but you should see the characteristics of them being manifest through the activities that the teams are engaged with. That is our core approach to learning, teaching, assessment and curriculum design.
So if we could nudge on one slide please:
Within our work around how we scaffold personal development we have been on a journey; we created the Develop at Derby brand probably three years ago now, as a way of capturing, under a single headline banner so we can actually market the work we were doing for our students, to make it easier for them to see where this was going on within their programme and also where they could access our Develop at Derby support service provision. For last year we approved a set of 10 core Develop at Derby skills and these, again, will be familiar to you from your own institutions for anybody who has done any work looking at graduate outcomes, sector skills, desires, outputs, from people like the CBI, on what is it that employers are looking for in students. You will see these characteristics being identified as being the important characteristics that students should leave an institution with. The words change, we appreciate there is always disputed language around these things, but these 10 skills broadly capture a fairly consistent set of skills, attributes and behaviours that students should be able to demonstrate and, for last year, we adapted our assessment specification template to specifically map to these 10 skills. So, if a student was doing a particular assessment, they should be able to see in their assignment specification which of these skills were being utilized, developed and possibly also assessed, we do not have a sort of assessment matrix against them, we do not ask for scoring against these particular skills at this point in time, but we do expect them to be signposted to our students so that they can recognise them. So again, as you are looking at the assessments within the areas for which you are responsible and the modules for which you are responsible, you should be able to start to see this repeated reference to Develop at Derby, that then links to the underlying supportive information that there is and, for each of these skill sets that there are supportive materials available via our Develop at Derby resource bank with multiple links to a range of different resources to help students prepare themselves and get better in each of these areas.
If we nudge on a slide again:
I am conscious of time, in terms of performance metrics and, linking back to some of what Richard was saying earlier about the importance of some of these, from a B3 perspective, in terms of student’s continuation and completion rates but also student achievement rates we do set, and I am always careful in my language around this, these are not benchmarks but they are thresholds that we would ask teams to reflect upon their performance relative to, so it's not a target. There is not a case that if you fall below this you need to sit on some form of institutional naughty step and explain yourself but they do help to provide a reference point for colleagues and for us, to map performance and outcomes at a holistic level across programmes, across colleges or subject areas and see how are we doing and how are we progressing as we seek to raise student attainment across all levels. Relatively simple in terms of what we are looking at; module average grade as an indicator of overall success. I am still working on the institutional infrastructure to get us to move to median grade rather than the mean average but it is the mean average as it stands, at the moment that we are reporting on. The first opportunity pass rate - the proportion of students who successfully complete assessment at the first opportunity they had to do that, accepting that those pass rates are made up of a number of different factors. Then specifically non-submission rates which are related to the pass rate but are a distinct and separate measure to it, that's a little bit historical and if we went back three or four years when I first joined the institution, there were some quite significant issues with our non-submission rates and we had some areas with quite high non-submission rates, that's much less of an issue for us now institutionally but is still one that we keep a weathered eye on. Within modules within the end of year module evaluation, we would expect teams to reflect upon those three metrics and, on the slide, you can see that the sorts of levels of performance that we would expect being achieved and against which we would expect teams to reflect, and I'll stress, not hard targets. They can vary if you have got a module with relatively few students on it and one or two students performing slightly differently can have a material impact upon the average grades that are achieved and therefore we need to be careful not to treat them in that way. Then at programme level we see it is the proportion of modules who are achieving those rates.
If we can then nudge on to what I think is the last slide:
The transformation proposals that Richard referenced earlier, are in the process at the moment of looking at changes. We had an Academic Board in October that agreed, in principle, for us to move, as Richard described, to a block delivery model at the moment where we are semesterised, although not universally so. We will have some areas where we have three 20 credit modules running in parallel in some other areas, we do still run long, thin, what we would describe as through modules that run throughout the length of the year, we have some 20 credit modules and we have some 40 credit modules across the mix. The proposal is that we move towards a block delivery model so instead of studying modules in parallel with each other we would study them in series. Also, that we would shift to that being four x 30 credit modules rather than six x 20 credit modules at Undergraduate level, then proportionally, working up to nine x 20 credit modules at Postgraduate. That would include us embedding assessment of the Develop at Derby skill set is one of the things that we are working through looking at. It's likely that as new External Examiners we would work through this process during your period of tenure so we would be looking at that redesign of provision during a period of time that you were with us as External Examiners. We do not as yet have a confirmed timeline, we do not know when we will start to do that, we are still working up the detailed proposals for exactly what that would look like and how quickly we would wish to make the change in our provision. I am really keen that we do it right rather than we do it quick, but we will see what that looks like. By the end of this academic session we will have clarity on that and we will be going to Academic Board in January to seek approval on those plans then we would hope to be engaging with you as External Examiners to help us in that programme redesign process, so be alert that that this is something that we are thinking about and programme teams may well make reference to during the course of this year but I would definitely expect them to in years to come whilst you are with us.
Laura, I think that it is baton back to you unless anybody has any questions that they would like to ask at this moment?
Laura: thank you Neil, that was great, thanks ever so much. There has been a question popped in the chat; if I read it to you Neil, it is “what is the purpose of moving to block delivery at post-graduate level? I am interested as I would have concerns in my subject area about teaching in this way.” Neil replied: I mean the underlying principle for wanting to have a consistent model across Undergraduate and Postgraduate provision is that we believe that will give benefits to our students in terms of supporting and scaffolding their learning as they move through. There is also obviously administrative benefits of having consistent models across different levels of study. There has been a mixture of module sizes in Postgraduate across the sector so I do not think there's anything inherently problematic in a block delivery model at Postgraduate. We will need to work with all of our individual subject teams to look at what does that look like in this provision so we preserve the quality of learning and the quality of student development as they go through, it will not simply be repackaging our current 20s into 30s; it will be about doing differently.
Thank you Neil, I think another one might have just popped in if you were happy for me to ask you that one, it says “there was no distinction of the apprenticeships and development of them moving inhouse. Are you aiming to align your approaches of Undergraduate, Postgraduate and apprenticeship or do you see them as separate entities?” Neil replied: a little bit like the previous answer - yes, we are hoping to align this and I think there is a lot of learning from our apprenticeship provision that we ought to be bringing into our design of what we might think of as the more traditional Undergraduate study. We are working through exactly what that looks like, we are testing to make sure that the model will work and we will have variations from the core model where it is the right thing to do but they will be different by design rather than different by accident of history, at the moment, much of our apprenticeship provision sits slightly out of line with the Undergraduate taught provision, mainly because the Undergraduate taught provision was designed first and then we have had to fit the apprentice model around it. When we have the opportunity to redesign it may well be that we redesign some of our more traditional programmes to better align with the apprentice model rather than always trying to make the apprentice model fit to the traditional Undergraduate so it is an opportunity for us to learn from the best of our provision and use that everywhere.
Laura: thank you Neil and thank you for those questions as well. Neil, that was great. We best let you get back to graduation and thank you for your time this morning, we really appreciate it.
Neil: bless you, Laura, thank you colleagues, hope you enjoy the rest of the morning, thank you, take care. Thanks.
Okay you're stuck with me again now I'm afraid. I'm going to talk about the role of the External Examiner here at Derby. The aim of my presentation is to introduce our team to provide an overview of information that's available to help you in your role, to identify key contacts, review key responsibilities and explore critical issues surrounding the External Examiner role, briefly talk about our account setup and access here at Derby for you as External Examiners and consider the key detail that will help you carry out your duties and responsibilities, along with outlining some approaches that ensures effective External Examining. Thank you.
I wanted to introduce our External Examiner team. As myself and Richard mentioned we sit within the Centre for Quality Assurance. There are several work streams within that, but External Examiners is one of them. For this particular work stream we have our Head of Academic Quality who you heard from this morning, our lovely Quality Manager Paula who you'll be hearing from after me, then there's myself and I lead the team operationally, support colleagues that you probably have more contact with throughout your duties. We have our Senior Quality Monitoring Officer Jennifer Kerr, our Quality Officer, Helen Crooke, and then five lovely Quality Administrators. I won't go through all their names individually, but they are listed there. I'm sure you've been having contact with some of these people already, before starting your tenure. We have a generic mailbox, which is external examiners@derby.ac.uk. Again, you're probably familiar with this already, but this is our main point of contact to offer you support, answer any questions and provide information to you.
Thank you, Zoe. First, I'm going to talk about the induction information that you've hopefully received or will be doing, on appointment, this is all sent to our External Examiners via email. You should have details of your appointed duties; this will be any programmes and modules that you've been approved for. In terms of your external duties, you'll also receive extracts from the University's Academic Regulations. A couple of academic years ago, probably not as recent, we have had an approval to extend our External Examiner tenure length here at Derby, it was four years, it's now five, most of you would have been appointed for that length of time.
We provide guidance on setting up your University of Derby account and gaining access to our systems. The systems are QMEP which Paula will talk about in more detail and Blackboard Ultra which we'll discuss later in the morning. Also, there's a frequently asked questions document that will hopefully give you a bit more information around that, setting up of your account and access.
We've recently implemented a privacy notice which is a little bit more in depth and details how we collect, use and protect your data, that's sent out with your appointment email. There's information on Blackboard Ultra as I've mentioned and our QMEP platform and also information around creating and submitting your annual report. There's also details on claiming your fee and expenses, information about roles and expectations, and if you have been allocated a mentor here at Derby for your first year of tenure, you would have confirmation of that mentor and details for contact too.
All of the information I've noted is also available on our External Examiner website, the links there for you to access. In terms of Blackboard itself, which is our VLE, that's where you would access your programme and module information and previous External Examiner reports and responses for your programmes. There's other quality contacts aside from ourselves that you can obviously liaise with for support throughout your tenure. At College and School level these will be your Programme Leader which should be your main point of contact throughout your tenure, there's Module Leaders, we have Subject Leads, Heads of Departments and Heads of School. In terms of non-academic, there's the College Registry teams that are more operational and they'll support you with details around assessment boards for example. We also have an online programme services team that support our online element of External Examiner duties. There's some other contacts that might support you or you would be in contact with throughout your tenure, again those key contacts will be noted and identified in your appointment email.
Some other key reference points and a few of these organisations have been mentioned already this morning. There's your induction information, I'm sure you know of and have networks with other External Examiners either at your own institution or externally that can be a source of guidance and support as well. The QAA has a wealth of information that can support that external expertise and the External Examiner role, there's some links there within the slides. The Advanced HE's External Examining handbook is also a source of information that might be helpful. There's information on our website around University of Derby's Academic Regulations and we have had some new regulations implemented for 25/26 which Melissa will talk a little bit more about later. As I said, there's that local College and Programme documentation that you'll have access to, and we have our website as well, which has a wealth of information to support you.
Something I just wanted to mention because we do get asked about other courses or training that might be useful in an External Examiner role. Advanced HE do offer a personal development course for new and existing External Examiners; it offers kind of practical advice and reinforces the UK standards of External Examining. There's a link there to find out a little bit more if you wish to do so.
As mentioned, your appointment here at Derby is likely for 5 years and hopefully you want to stay and are committed to us for that length of time and enjoy your time here at Derby. We used to apply extensions, but since going to a 5-year tenure, we don't tend to do that now, and they're only applied in exceptional circumstances. For example, if a programme was going to be closing, we'd probably look to extend your tenure to see that process through.
Throughout your tenure, you might experience and are likely to go through a process of changing your duties, we call this a reallocation of duties. These need to be agreed with your Programme Leader and then there is a form that the College need to complete to submit to ourselves to make sure everything's aligned and accurate in terms of your duties. That obviously has a knock- on effect on your fee and we need to make sure you have access to relevant modules and programme information as well. You will be granted access to Blackboard and QMEP which I've mentioned. Sometimes there might be a need where a Programme Leader might contact you to provide temporary cover. Sometimes we have situations where other External Examiners you know might not be able to support and it's quite a quick turnaround that's needed to support our students and the moderation of work. You may be asked to support with an urgent reallocation of duties or offer a bit of temporary cover if you are able. But again, that would be discussed at that programme level.
The duties and the kind of record we have of your duties is really important. It enables us to make sure you set up effectively, that you have access to the right information and where this is incorrect it can impact quite negatively in terms of moderation delays and impact on assessment boards and ultimately that affects students. So, we do promote to our programme contacts that it's important we have a clear record of what duties they expect you to carry out.
We have different types of external examiners here at Derby, Subject Level, Programme Level, a couple of Chief Externals. The other thing that I've just mentioned in terms of your tenure is around resignation. We are mindful you know things happen, this is an additional role to very busy lives that you lead already and as Neil referenced, it's not always the most highly paid incentive. So, we do understand things come to play where you're maybe not able to fulfil your tenure here. If that happens and you wish to resign, we ask that you notify ourselves and the programme team with as much notice as possible. Ideally six months and that just enables us to obviously find a replacement and mitigate any risk in terms of your duties.
I'm going to briefly touch on our account access here at Derby. As you hopefully know, you will have been set up with a University of Derby mailbox. All communications, so updates, emails will be sent to that Derby mailbox, this is your Ment number and takes the format of mentxxxx@.ac.uk.
It's provided by the University, so again on your appointment letter from our team we will provide you with the Ment number and also you can contact us if you're unclear of that. It enables you to sign into other platforms that we've mentioned and also automated notifications from them platforms get sent to that mail address as well. We ask that you check this regularly and that that remains consistent throughout your duties. The benefits of this are that it enables you to have the right permissions to access other platforms and also keeps things separate from other emails and work that you do outside of Derby. Within the information in your appointment letter, there's lots of tips and tricks and guidance on how to make that more seamless and streamlined for you.
In your role you should be advised of changes to University Assessment Regulations, to be consulted if module assessment strategy or methods are amended. There's an expectation that you verify assessment briefs and examinations prior to the start of a module. Completing that assessment verification to review a sample of assessed work commenting on the achievement of learning outcomes, standards of work and evidence of internal moderation. There might be times where you're asked to review level four modules, our regs classify that it's level five and six, anything that counts towards that degree classification, that in some cases you might express a wish or be asked to look at level four modules particularly new modules and new programmes.
Your key responsibilities are to verify the University standards, that they're appropriate to award and taking into account that level descriptor, assist in the maintenance of academic standards by comparing student performance, assist the University in ensuring that the assessment process is valid and fair throughout assessment verification and the moderation of student work, offer advice and be that critical friend on curriculum design and development, relevance and coherence of curricular material. Ultimately wanted to mention the Vice Chancellor. so obviously Kath is our chair of Academic Board and all of our External Examiner work feeds into those committees, and it is overseen by her.
I'm mindful of time because I think we're a little bit behind schedule but I'm hoping that a message has gone to Paula, and she's queued up ready to go.
I'm just going to talk about Blackboard. In terms of reviewing samples of work, this will be via Blackboard which you'll get more information on shortly. Ultimately your Programme Leader should confirm to you the sampling requirements for your duties. Our standard guidance is that there's a maximum of 250 pieces that it includes all modes of assessment that contribute to the calculation of the award or its classification. Our sample size is calculated as the square root of the total number of students undertaking the assessment, with a minimum of five or the total number of students if that is less than five. The sample should reflect a full range of grades awarded or the delivery modes and locations of each module and recognition of prior learning if applicable, should be taken into account. I'm going to briefly touch upon assessment boards, these are run at a local level, Colleges will provide greater information around these. As I said, your contact for them is the College Registry operation team. We operate a one-tier assessment board here at Derby where both modules and progression will be considered. We have our main boards throughout the Summer period to confirm marks and makes decisions on progression and awards. We have Spring boards, January and February time to make decisions on awards concerning January start students and then we have our September boards to make decisions on refer students. That's kind of the basic outline, but obviously we have boards that sit outside of that structure, particularly when there's PSRB requirements, the volume of assessment boards can differ across each College. There must be at least one External Examiner at each board, but here at Derby, we do have a role of a College Level External. So, it's not always necessary that you will attend a board, but you're able to express a wish to do so if you would like to. The attendance at the assessment board is to ensure due process and that due diligence of the running of that board, we also have our academic partner boards and our online learning boards too. Of course we can provide greater information throughout your tenure, but it will be your College that would be able to provide that at a more local level.
I'm going to briefly go through this one because we have our other boards that I've just mentioned. These are other boards that consider students studying at academic partners or through online learning. In these cases, there tends to be more invites sent to externals to attend and as I say that that differs depending on the type of programme or the College that you're allocated to. You should know the expectation at the start of each academic year; your Programme Leader should be able to provide that information on timelines as well and if you do attend more boards than expected then an additional fee can be negotiated. In terms of attendance requirements some of these happen more virtually now but we are seeing more External Examiners wishing to come on site and meet their programme teams in person. Sometimes it's necessary for you to attend campus to view student work and attend assessment boards as we've mentioned. So, the number of visits can vary but that is a requirement of your role where applicable. Sometimes there's a need to visit academic partners but that might be shared across a group of External Examiners.
In terms of Reports and Responses, you will be expected each year to submit an Annual Report, and this will be via our QMEP platform which Paula will go on to speak about in the next presentation. I just wanted to outline that we don't go into lots of depth about that process today, we hold training around the submission of Annual Reports throughout the academic year, myself and my colleague Jen will be setting those up shortly, so don't worry about that. There'll be information on how you access QMEP for that purpose and submit your annual report. The report is expected within four weeks of the main assessment board for your duties and once all moderation has been completed. If you have for example UG and PG duties, we do ask for separate reports, and these are submitted at particular time frames, you will always be paid on the receipt of your annual report. If you submit more than one that will be on your final submission. These are seen by a variety of colleagues within the institution, but our team is involved in the processing of them and completing a quality check. The Programme Leader is required to make a full response to your report and that is within six weeks of the receipt of your submission, in line with our academic regs. Our team will support with reminders and any queries that you have in relation to that process and as I said your programme team should be very clear on those moderation time frames and expectation for when that needs to be submitted. So just a brief slide here on cover and our termination policy, if you are unable to perform your duties as an External Examiner, please notify your Programme Leader and then as mentioned earlier, we can make alternative arrangements. We will normally ask for another External Examiner as mentioned to provide some cover. One thing just to be aware of is the Annual Report is an expected and necessary requirement of your duties here at Derby, we expect for that to be submitted as I mentioned within 4 weeks. If you are unable and there is a failure to submit that report then we would be progressing towards termination and unfortunately you wouldn't receive your fee. So, it's a very key process and supports obviously the work that you do and our programme teams as well as the institution.
In terms of your programme team, we always highlight that that is the relationship that is really important, and we promote that internally with our colleagues as well. We do a lot of work with Colleges, programme teams and we obviously discuss and outline the importance of the External Examiner role. You should receive information on the modules that you're carrying out duties for, draft assessments and assessment verification forms. The actual forms themselves are accessible via QMEP but you should be provided with timelines of when that work needs to be completed. Samples of student work is shared via Blackboard and there's a specific folder that you need to access to view that, but the answers to questions, your write up and review of that work is via QMEP as well. You should receive a complete results list including mean and standard deviation, again, that's via QMEP, completed internal moderation, which is via QMEP, so hopefully quite a smooth and streamlined process for you. Any updated programme information, a formal response to your annual report and one thing that we highlight, and our team has a follow-up and chase process for that is to ensure that you have a local induction with your programme contact which outlines sort of what I've mentioned already.
In terms of effective External Examining as I said the communication is really key. We get a lot of positive feedback from our External Examiners where that connection is really positive, they're given timelines in advance, and they have that relationship and positive engagement with their programme team. So that transparency and communication is really key to those effective relationships. And of course, that goes both ways from yourselves to the programme team as well. It's important that that's maintained and that you're clear on your accountabilities. Obviously with all the workload that you have, that's why we stress the importance of you being clear each academic year of what's required. The submission of good reports, good responses and positive relationships and really getting to know the programme that you're assigned to. Being involved in that moderation and obviously engaging in other things in terms of visits, assessment boards where you wish to and where's helpful to you in your role. Of course, what comes into that if you spot any major issues or major concerns, it's really important that you feed that back. There's an option to do that via your annual report, but of course, you can reach out to your programme team at any time.
In terms of updates from us, we have our web pages which I've highlighted, as a team, we are constantly in contact with you hopefully in a helpful way. So, we will always provide key information to you via your Ment email address. Any updates, anything that you need to know, we will basically reach out to you as a central team. We've also recently launched a newsletter, so hopefully you've received that and that is something we're going to look to be doing quarterly throughout each year. We have External Examiner forums that are held by the College and there's a chance for you to network with other externals and kind of tap into College issues. These are on pause at the moment just because we're going through a restructure at the University and have recently gone through one. We are going to pick those back up hopefully in the new year and are just in the process of confirming the value of them and the usefulness. If you have a change of contact details, if your work situation or your institution changes, it's really important that you let us know and we will carry out a conflict-of-interest check, just to make sure everything's still okay in terms of your tenure. I think this is my last slide and then I'm going to pass on to Paula.
I've mentioned assessment verification and moderation quite a lot already and obviously the role of the External Examiner is for that continual monitoring. Our QMEP platform you'll get very sick of hearing that terminology, but it's so embedded throughout your tenure and as I said that's for the verification moderation and submission of annual reports. I've already mentioned around key timelines for those periods and the sharing of samples of student work. For any EPA externals, you may be required to use the software ACE360 and again upon your appointment and induction that will be sort of outlined to you. In terms of your duties, if you need any support or if there's any moderation issues, hopefully you'll know those key contacts to go to.
In terms of the useful contacts just to kind of outline these, we have our External Examiner team, main port of call for anything to do with your tenure any processes or support that you might need please contact us. We also have a quality monitoring mailbox which is basically the same team sitting behind it, but it just is more linked to QMEP itself and any problems you experience with that. So please feel free to contact that for QMEP if needed. I've already mentioned our website, so thank you. I'm not going to blame myself too much for running over because we were a little bit behind, but hopefully I've whizzed through that and giving you a bit of detail as well. So, I'm going to pass on to Paula now and then we'll go to a break to give you a chance to stretch your legs. Thank you very much. And welcome, Paula.
Thanks, Laura. I'm aware that I've got the sort of the slot before break, and you are all going to be keen to sort of go and stretch your legs or get yourself a drink. So, I'll try not to take too long so you get a decent break this morning. Good morning, everyone. As Laura said, my name is Paula Bushby. I'm one of the quality managers within the Centre for Quality Assurance. I work closely with both Richard Monk and Laura, who you've met already. My role specifically involves leading on developments relating to the university's monitoring and evaluation procedures and the systems that are associated with them. My part here this morning is to introduce you to one of those systems, which is the university's quality monitoring and evaluation platform QMEP. I'm aware that some of you will already have come across it and that you may have already used it most likely for verification of assessments for this academic year. If this is the case, then I'd like to say thank you for your engagement with it so far. It's still a relatively new system and is often the case particularly with bespoke systems which this one is. We're still coming across the occasional issues and identifying areas for improvement. So I'd like you to like to thank you really for your patience and understanding if this has affected you in any way so far. Lust to give you a little bit of a context and this links really with the information that Neil Fowler's already provided and what Laura's been speaking about. During the development of our learning, teaching and assessment framework that Neil introduced earlier, we identified five main quality assurance and enhancement activities that we now represent as a cycle of activities that are completed each time a module runs. These five main module quality assurance activities became the focus of a digitization project. Our student voice activities already had digitization work in progress. The work relating to continual monitoring focused very much on the processes of assessment, verification, moderation of assessed student work, and self-evaluation. This work was supported by a number of other developments going on at the university particularly to do with the provision of student performance data, and that helped us to deliver the project's strategic requirements. The project resulted in the development of QMEP which is an online application, and it went live in July last year ready for the start of the 24/25 academic year. It's just been in use for one full academic year now and coming to the end of its first full cycle of continual monitoring. The aim for it really was that it would simplify and streamline those essential continual monitoring processes, most especially for you as external examiners and your involvement with assessment, verification, and moderation of assessed student work. As Laura has mentioned with the completion of your annual response but also to allow you to receive the responses to that report as well. QMEP has brought with it a whole host of benefits. Those that particularly apply to you in your role include accessing those processes in that one online platform which allows you to complete your part in the QMEP app too. The flows within it are all automated, and there are automated email notifications and reminders. The email notifications contain a link which if you click on the link it takes you directly to work that you need to do. There's not necessarily a requirement for you to sort of keep the app open, it can be saved in your bookmarks or in your favourites the email notifications contain a link each time you get those through. There is my tasks area in QMEP. If you do access the QMEP app through its main link and go to the homepage, you'll see that there's my tasks area that takes you to any work that's specifically sitting with you for action. Documents such as assessment briefs and exam papers are provided to you as attachments to the forms within the app. There's also the functionality for you to be able to refer forms back to the module leader. If you are involved in one of those processes and you're not quite sure of something and you need a little bit more information from the module leader. There is a refer function that you're able to use that sends that form back to the module leader for them to be able to provide that additional information or to make changes. You're able to see comments that have been left by others in the process flow and you're also able to leave your own comments if you want to as a sort of a bit of a side conversation so that others in the flow can view and respond to them. QMEP also allows you to create and complete your annual report. When the time comes, we'll be providing you with further guidance and as Laura said, training nearer the time on that. You are able to output forms from QMEP into PDF format. Then there are numerous other benefits for us here at the university as well including reporting dashboards, auto storage of any documentation and auto archiving.
The important stuff and guidance about assessment verification, moderation of assessed student work and using QMEP is available to you via those pages on the university website. We've got those specific external examiner web pages and there is a link to QMP on those pages as well. When you access QMEP you'll be asked to sign in most especially the first time that you do it. You should do this using the email address that's been provided for you with the associated password. That's your ment number email address, and if an app permissions box appears, we just ask you to click on allow, please. It's just the permissions are provided via your University of Derby account and it's just making sure that those permissions are then applied and allow you to go in. As I said, when there's work for you to do in QMEP, you'll receive an automated email notification which will come from that quality monitoring mailbox. These notifications will also contain that link that you can use to take you straight to that task. Then once in QMEP, you should find it hopefully simple and intuitive to use. The home screen gives you some options to change the appearance such as the font size and the colour theme so that you can get it working in a way that best suits your needs. You can access the guidance from there too. So, there's a little drop-own arrow from guidance. Then if you click on the external examiners link, it takes you to those external examiner web pages. And then as I said, there's that area that my tasks area that allows you to easily see where there's input needed from you. So, any forms that are currently sitting with you waiting for action from you will appear in that my tasks area. Then when in a form itself in QMEP you are able to easily navigate to the different sections using those subway buttons on the left-hand side of the screen. Those will be coloured green if a section's been completed. They'll be yellow if that's the area that there's work to do on. If they're clear, then they haven't yet been started. So that that particular example on the on the slide there, you can see that alongside external, the little symbol there is yellow. So that's indicating that it's that section of the form that is needing editing. You're able to click on those buttons and it actually takes you directly to the right section of the form and it collapses the form so that you just see the relevant section and then clicking on it again expands the form back to its full size. You'll see along the top there, there's some buttons, you're able to use save. That saves your work but allows you to come back to it at another time if you want to. There's that refer button that you can see there, that loops the form back to the module leader for clarification or changes. And then there's a submit button and that submit button progresses the form to the next stage in the process flow. It triggers any automated email notifications to the next person, in the flow as well to let them know then that there's work for them to go in and do. Then in addition, as I said earlier, you'll you'll be able to view any attachments that have been uploaded to a form. You'll be able to see any comments that have been provided by others in that process flow and also to add your own comments if you wish. Then there's the University of Derby logo that always appears in the top left-hand side of the screen. If you click on that logo, it always takes you back to the QMEP home screen. So that's quite a useful feature as well just to get you back to that home screen. Then if you find that you do need more information or guidance, this is available to you via the external examiner pages on our website, and you can also access from QMEP as well by clicking on that guidance button. Then as Laura said, we've got those generic mailboxes that you're able to use specifically for QMEP which is the quality monitoring mailbox.
For anything relating to timing of assessment, verifications, moderation, assessment boards that's usually comes from your main college contacts. So, the program leads usually in the colleges or via the college registry ops teams. And then as Laura said, we've got that central external examiner mailbox too. Julia is here ready and waiting. So thank you Julia. Over to you.
Thank you very much Laura. , so if you could just put the agenda up for me, that would be great. So, while you guys are reading the agenda, I'll just introduce myself. So, I'm Julia Woodland. I'm currently the college lead for health and humanities for apprenticeships, but I also have a role in supporting across the university in terms of things like program validation. I run our apprenticeship community of practice where all of the training for our academics sits. So I think that's why I've been called in to talk about apprenticeships because I really live, sleep, eat, and breathe them. Okay. So, at the University of Derby, we currently have about 2,700 apprentices studying 57 different standards and supporting 435 employers. So as you can see it's a huge part of our provision. We have level two three that are delivered at Buxton some level four five and then we have level four five to level 7 currently delivered at the University of Derby. Now while a lot of the level seven provision will be going very shortly they have extended the advanced clinical practitioner standard for a while because they haven't worked out how they're going to fund it essentially. We do have some level seven provision. For example, our enhanced clinical practitioner is available at level six or seven and that will stay because the standard that supports it is a level six standard. We are allowed to do that because all apprenticeship standards are designed to be delivered at a level above and a level below where they're pitched. We've got a long history of working with a variety of businesses locally and nationally particularly in engineering and health. With the new business school we expect the demand to grow in terms of delivery of apprenticeships across business as well. For those of you that are new to apprenticeships, an apprenticeship is a job role. It's made up of different components and regulated by the department for education the department for work and pensions and ofsted and every apprenticeship that's delivered in England because they are only available in England will have set criteria and they're known as knowledge skills and behaviours off the job learning. Now this used to be ruled as 20% of the total number of hours. However, this government have changed it and if you look at the funding regulations for this year towards the bottom of the government page where the funding regs are held. You'll see something called annex c and that tells you the specific number of hours each apprenticeship standard now has aligned to it. So it varies according to the standard over how long it's delivered. It's really important that you know that because that will be part of your role as the external examiner and making sure that those hours have been met and they are meeting those minimum standards. An apprentice also has to complete on the job learning. Functional skills has changed slightly. If an apprentice starts their program before the age of 19 and they don't have functional skills, they still have to do it. It's still compulsory. If they are aged 19 or over at the start of their apprenticeship it becomes optional but the option sits with the employer not the apprentice themselves. It's important that you know you have evidence as the external examiner that you can see that somewhere that discussion's taking place that that student is exempt. They have progress reviews which are currently every 3 months. The student then has to go through gateway and they then have to achieve an endpoint assessment. Thank you. So there's two main types of EPA within the university apprenticeship integrated and independent. All apprentices will enter a period called gateway and that signals the end of the taught program. When they get to the end of the talk program, a student will enter gateway and at that point a declaration occurs to say that they are ready to take that endpoint assessment and that declaration is for the employer, the apprentice, the university. It's a check that the jobs achieved functional skills and there might be some qualifications that they need to progress through that gateway to get to their endpoint assessment. Thank you. So an integrated degree apprenticeship is where the degree qualification is included in the apprenticeship and it's part of it and it's fully integrated. In these circumstances the provider delivering the degree apprenticeship will also be the EPAO that undertakes the apprenticeship and from an external examiner point of view it's important that you're confident that that process is independent of the program team. So you need to be ensuring that yes students have done what they need to do for the endpoint assessment but are you convinced that that has been completed independently of the program team. So while we are the EPAO and it's a checklist and the team are involved in it. You need to make sure that you know everything is done so that it is you look at it with a an external pair of eyes to make sure that all the parts of the assessment are complete. These sorts of EPAs they will either be what's effectively a tickbox exercise at the point of gateway. So has the student achieved everything they need to achieve on their program and all of their KSBs, all of their hours and then they'll progress to assessment board or they will have accredited module. So for accredited module students will have to do a piece of work where the endpoint assessment is a module. Okay. And that module can be worth anything from 20 to 40 credits of their final award. So that's when it becomes a bit more complicated and we need to make sure that people independent of the team that deliver the program have set the questions, delivered the assessment and assessed the students. So that's where that kind of integrated endpoint assessment becomes a bit more complex. The independent endpoint assessment is really easy. The student goes through their program, they do their award, they get to gateway and then an external organization undertakes that endpoint assessment. So it's much easier to see that there is that independent assessment of those students. . So in terms of your role as the external examiner um with apprenticeships it's a little bit more complex. We need at least one campus visit per cohort and that can be done online if appropriate to observe live assessments for those students. We need an annual report submitting to summarize your observations and findings. A sample of assessed endpoint assessment work to ensure consistency and fairness. We need you to review assessment instruments, materials and documentation to ensure alignment with the published EPA plan. And that's particularly important where it is accredited module, to ensure that we as the EPAO have set it up correctly. A sample of gateway paperwork for individual apprentices. So that's their gateway declaration forms. It's good practice if you can attend and observe a gateway meeting for those apprentices. Meet with the independent assessors to ensure their knowledge is current and confirm their understanding of the roles and responsibilities. Attend an independent assessor induction and standardization session to ensure consistency and assessment in practices. Attend boards where final EPA decisions are made and evaluate the approach to applying reasonable adjustments to EPA to ensure fairness inclusivity. Now if it's what I call a fully integrated degree apprenticeship where it's literally a tickbox exercise some of those things don't apply. The important parts are when it is accredited module because we need to ensure that sterile corridor if you like between the program team and the endpoint assessment. That's where all of this observation attending independent assessor induction and standardization to make sure we're training them correctly as the EPAO and that there is consistency there for the students irrelevant of which cohort they're on. . So we use two types of e portfolio in the university. We use pebble pad and we use smart assessor. The main purpose of the EPA of the e portfolio is to collect evidence of progress towards the apprenticeship, log the off the job learning, do progress reviews, sign off KSPs, provide evidence for KSPs, that sort of thing. It may mean that you need to access one of these e portfolios to complete your external examiner role. I can't say everybody will because not everybody needs to. It depends on the apprenticeship, but the EPA team will support you if you do need to do that. So in terms of reporting then as part of your annual reports you might find there are sections requiring specific comments about the achievement and progression of apprenticeship students and the quality of their learning on program and that's a really important part of feedback for us because it's really important for apprentices that their apprenticeship remains current. It's on the job work-based learning and therefore, you know, it's imperative that practices are up to date, students are meeting the needs of employers, they're meeting local skills needs and all of those sorts of things are really important for you to look at as part of your report. If you can look out for those questions especially if you've got a degree program where the cohorts are mixed with undergrad and postgrad students. Undergrad and apprenticeship students in the same cohort. So some programs will teach apprentices with their standard undergrad students and it's important that you can see clearly who they are and what provision is put in place to help those students meet their apprenticeship standard. That will be explained to you when you're writing your reports. So external examiners for apprenticeships have a quite a significant impact. It's not just seen within your immediate work support assessments. It's lasting. It will appear in audits and inspections. We use it for evidence for Ofsted, for the Department for Education and for the Office for Students. And your actions and outputs are imperative to the success of the audits and ensuring the success of our apprentices. If you're familiar with apprenticeships, you'll be aware that from the 10th of November, the government are using the new EIF framework, the new education inspection framework to, inspect apprenticeships. So that's the new ofsted framework. And as a as an external examiner, it's important that you understand how we as HE skills provider are examined or inspected by Ofsted to meet the criteria. So it's there's quite a significant change in terms of how they report. So it's now a report card with different grades on rather than overall grade. So your reports help to us to inform us of the improvements we need to make to be able to secure those exceptional grades because that's where we're aiming. You know, we got good last time in our ofsted report. We're now aiming higher and the replacement for outstanding is exceptional in each of the five areas. Anybody got any questions? Thank you, Julia. That was that was brilliant. I'm just checking the chat. I don't think any have come through there. So, unless anyone puts their hand up, I think there isn't any. So, I'm just checking. I probably just blinded them all with authentic language. It's a unique language of its own. They know they have time at the end as well to ask anything. So, if anything does come our way, Julia, we'll pass it on to you if we're unsure of the answer. But, thank you so much for coming and we really appreciate that. We'll see you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye. Thanks, Julia. Okay. And now we're going to move on to Anik. I can see she's in the virtual room. So, Anick, welcome. And Ann's going to talk about Blackboard Ultra. Thank you very much.
Yes. Hello. Good morning, everyone. I'm Annick Fructoso. I'm a learning technologist here at the University of Derby. So today I'm just going to walk you through how external examiners can navigate and access Blackboard Ultra. So hopefully I'll go through some slides and if I can share my screen later, I can do a short live demo. Uh so if I can have the next slide. Thank you. So, to log into Blackboard, you will try you will need to navigate to the URL which is lo learn.dby.ac.uk.
You will be able to login with your university username and password as Laura mentioned before. Your username will be your email address which is your meant account. So, it's meant followed by a number at derby.ac.uk with your password. So, you should be able to log into blackboard this way. Once you logged in you will land onto the, what we call the institution page and then you will need to click on modules on the left-hand side menu. So, this will give you access to, if I can have the next slide, please. Once you click on Menu on Modules, sorry, you will be able to see all the modules you're attached to on the right-hand side. So, if you've got a lot of modules, you can actually do a search for the module um in the search bar here and um you will just need to click on the module you want to review to access the module. If I can have the next slide, please. So, all the modules are structured, or should be structured, in the same way. We're using a sort of a pre-populated template to ensure consistency across all the modules and to ease the navigation for all the users. So, it doesn't matter which module you access, they should all follow the same format. So, if I go through quickly a little bit about the format of each module, on the top here you've got the navigation bar. So, we are I mean on this screenshot, it's the content area which is probably where you will stay most of the time, but you've got access to everything in the module. So, you've got access to the calendar, the announcements, discussion, grade book, messages, analytics, group, achievements, everything. So, you can see everything in the module. So, you've got the first section which is about your module where all the information about the module will be in there. So, for example, the module handbook will be located into this section. The second section is about module assessment and submission. And hopefully if I do a live demo, I can show you that in a bit more detail where you will find the submission point for the student, and you will be able to access the assessment brief, for example. Then you will have the weekly content. So, I've just put on this screenshot just one week, but you will have I think about 12 weeks of content. So, where all the study materials for the student are located or and all the activities for the student for each week. So, you should have um about 12 weeks of content and the last item on the um on the content page of the module should be the external examiner folder. So, it is hidden from students, and it is usually the last item on the page. And within the folder you will be able to to find um some sample of paper. If I can have the next slide, please. So that's um that's a screenshot of when you access the external examiner folder. So, in this folder you will have access to two subfolders. One for the sample of coursework and one for any other documentation. Uh if I can have the next slide and we're going to have a look at the sample of coursework. So here again in the screenshot I am in the external examiner folder. I've opened up the sample of coursework and in the sample of coursework there might be different ways the information is provided to you. It could be direct link to the assignments. So, for example, if it's a multimedia assessment where student have to provide for example a video or a narrated PowerPoint presentation it usually will be a link uh to the submission. So, you can see here there's like paperclip icon. So that's a link direct to the submission. So, you will be able to access the live submission for the specific students. If it's a turn it in uh submission, usually the paper will be downloaded and uploaded in the sample of coursework. So, there might be different ways to access the papers here and then you've got the folder for any other documents. If I can have the next slide, please. And as I mentioned before you've got the external examiner folder, but you also have access to all modules. So, within the module, just below About Your Module, there's a section called Module Assessment and Submissions and in there you will, it's a bit small, but hopefully in the live demo you'll see it a bit better, but you will be able to see the assessment brief within that section, and the submission points. So, the submission points are usually located in a folder. So, you will have assessment one, assessment two and within the folder you will have the submission point you'll be able to to access. Can I have the next slide, please? Okay. So, that's the demo. So, if it's okay I'm going to share my screen and to do a live demo. I'm just going to go into my screen. Can everybody see my screen now? Yeah. Yes, I'm sharing? Yes, everybody can see? Okay, good. Thank you. Okay, cool. So, that's Blackboard Ultra. I'm logged in as myself as you can see. So, that's the institution page as I was mentioning before. So, I'm logged in. I am on the institution page here. I want to access some of the modules. So, I will click on modules on the left-hand side.
And when I go into, that's all the module I've got. I've got loads, but I'm just going to go into the demo one I've got here. So, I'm going to select my module. I can do as I mentioned before, a search for a specific module is if I've got a lot of modules located to me. So, I'm just going to click on this module here. So, as I was mentioning earlier, before you've got access to the navigation bar on the top here with the content, which is the main section which is where we are at the moment, but you can see the calendar announcements, etc, on the top here in the Course Content, you've got the About Your Module Section. So, you just need to click to open the section, and you can see that you will be able to see the module on book or any information relevant to the module in that section. In the second section, you will have the module assessment and submission. So, as I mentioned before, uh if I open up this one, you will have access here to the assessment brief. And you will be able to to have a look at the submission as well if you wanted to. So, that's for assessment one, assessment two, and you can access the turn it in submission point for example. And it will load the submissions from the students here. Might take a bit of time. So, I've got only one student, a demo student, but I will be able to click on the submission and see the submission and the feedback, etc, from for that specific submission. If I close that section, as I said, you will have the weekly content. So, I've got week one, week two, and there should be about 12 weeks of content. And the last item on the page is the external examiners folder. So, if I open up the external examiner folder, you will see I've got the two folders, the sample of coursework and the other documents. And if I open up the sample of coursework, I just put some examples, two examples here. So, that's a link. So, that's a direct link to a submission because perhaps it's a multimedia submission. So, if I click on that sample, it will open up the live submission. So, it will directly go to that specific submission for that demo student here. So, I can see the submission, and I can see the feedback and the rubric, if there's a rubric associated to it. However, you might have some Turn-It in submission, and academics might actually upload the downloaded paper from Turn-It In, for example. So, that's another example here. So, if I open up that submission, I will be able to see um the submission from the student with the comments and the feedback at the bottom here. I think that's about it. Have I got any questions or anything I've missed? Anybody would like some clarification?
Thank you, Annick. That was really helpful as always. There's a couple of questions in the chat, but I think we're able to pick up most of them. It's more about access and sort of how they've set up. So, I don't think there's anything specific at the moment, but thank you as always your input with the induction is really helpful and I'm sure people have found that demo useful as well. So, thank you for coming along.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Take care. Thank you. Okay. So now we're going to move on to a presentation around the academic regulations.
Hi, I'm Melissa from the Student Policy and Regulation.
Oh, it's okay. So, I was just going to say that this is actually a recorded presentation. My colleague is ready to roll. So, we'll play this now. Melissa's not able to present herself today, so she's recorded this for us. So, just to say if you do have any questions in relation to this, can you pop them in the chat? And if we obviously can't answer them, we will pass them to Melissa and come back to you following the induction today. Thanks ever so much, Zoe, and we'll play the presentation now. Thank you.
Hi, I'm Melissa from the student policy and regulations team. In this session, we'll walk through the key academic regulations that support assessment and progression at the University of Derby.
Let's begin with how students pass a module:
For undergraduate modules levels 3 to 6, the overall pass mark is 40%.
For post-graduate taught modules level 7, it's 50%.
The module mark may be calculated in 3 ways:
Some modules allow a pass on aggregate, meaning the average grade across assessments meets the threshold of 40% or 50%.
Pass fail assessments must be passed.
For must pass modules, the students must pass every assessment task with 40 or 50%. Pass fail assessments must be passed.
These modules are usually linked to professional standards.
We also have minimum threshold modules. Students must achieve at least 35 for undergraduate or 45 for postgraduates in all assessments:
Past fail assessments must be passed. These modules are usually linked to professional standards.
The grading basis for each module should be outlined in the module specifications and assessment briefs.
Module enrolment and reassessment:
If a student does not achieve a pass mark at the first attempt, they'll be offered a reattempt at the assessment. This could be in the form of the original assessment or if it's course work, a reworked version based on feedback.
Reattempts are capped at the pass mark, 40% for undergraduate and 50% for postgraduate. The highest mark achieved when at first attempt or reassessment is used.
After the reattempts, if the model remains failed and all assessments have been submitted to an exceptional reattempt may be allowed.
The exceptional reattempt is also capped at the pass mark. If following all reassessment opportunities, the module remains failed, the student must retake the module.
Undergraduate progression rules vary depending on the program:
For undergraduate students, they need 120 credits to pass a stage. In some cases, they can progress with 100 credits trailing one module. Or they can progress with 80 credits plus compensation in a module and trail a module.
Students must complete level 3 before moving to level 5 and they must complete level 4 before moving to level 6.
If taking a placement year, level 5 must be completed first.
In an academic year, if a full-time student does not pass the minimum of 40 credits or a part-time student does not pass any credits, they will be withdrawn for academic failure.
Post-graduate progression:
Post-graduate students can progress after completing interim stages like a Certificate or Diploma. They may retake up to 20 credits alongside the next stage.
If a student has multiple failed modules or multiple assessments at reattempts, they will receive a progress warning from the assessment board.
If no credits are passed in an academic year, they will be withdrawn for academic failure unless a break in learning has been approved.
Undergraduate awards:
To earn an honours degree, students need 360 credits with marks of 40% or above.
Classifications are based on a weighted average, which is 20% from level 5, and 80% from level 6.
Threshold marks are 70% for a first, 60% for a 21, 50% for a 22, and 40% for a third.
Borderline cases may be upgraded if 60 credits at level 6 meets the high classification.
For top-up degrees, classification is based entirely on level 6. For non-honours degrees, 300 credits is required and they must have at least 60 credits graded 40% or above at level 6.
We also offer foundation degrees, HNDs and HNC's with merit and distinction based on level 4 or level 5 averages.
Post-graduate awards:
Masters degrees require 180 credits at level 7.
Classification is based on the average mark for the level seven modules. Threshold marks are 50% for a pass, 60% for a merit, and 70% for a distinction.
Borderline cases may be upgraded if the level 7 independent study meets the higher classification.
Post-graduate diplomas and post-graduate certificates require 120 and 60 credits, respectively, and are classified a pass.
Some programs also allow 20 credits at level 6.
Integrated Masters:
Integrated master’s classifications depend on the program structure.
The Masters degree is calculated on the level 7 modules.
If a student fails the integrated masters, their award will follow undergraduate rules. The overall performance may include level 7 modules. However, the average mark is taken from the highest 120 credits and borderline profiles refer to level 6 averages.
Assessment board discretion:
External examiners play a key role in ensuring consistency and fairness of decisions at the assessment board. And the assessment boards have discretion in several areas.
For undergraduate students, compensation may be applied to modules graded between 35 and 39%. But this can only apply for one 20 credit module per level.
Assessment boards can also approve the exceptional reattempts.
They can extend registration periods by up to one year and they can extend breaks in learning by up to one year.
Assessment boards may exercise discretion to confirm or overturn a decision to withdraw a student for academic failure, when compelling circumstances are evidenced.
This discretion should only be used when it's in the students best academic interest.
They are likely to achieve their final award and all regulatory requirements like registration limits and reassessment rules are met.
If you have any questions or need any support, the Student Policy and Regulations team are here to help.
You can email us at academicregs@derby.ac.uk or you can visit our academic regulations webpage, which is on the University of Derby website.
Thank you for your time today.
I'd like to welcome the Head of Academic Partnerships, Gail Trippleton. Hi Gail. Thank you for coming and, I'll hand over to you. Thank you very much.
Thank you Laura. I sound very keen don't I that I've been here throughout but it's actually been very interesting listening to my colleagues. So good morning everybody. As the slide says and Laura's introduction says I'm Gail Thrippleton, the Head of Academic Partnerships at the University of Derby working in Global Engagement. So if we can just go on to the next slide please. So we're going to explore various things in this session that are outlined there and I think we can move on to the next slide. So I'm very conscious listening to the presentations today that not all of you will be involved in all areas, and so when it comes to Academic Partnerships I'm conscious that some of our externals will not be involved in this area but if you are you will have been appointed part of your criteria for appointment will be your experience of managing transnational education. So hopefully you will have that experience. I think I want to pause there and just talk about how important that experience is because for those of you that are involved in Academic Partnerships, you will understand that each partner is a separate institution. So we've got the University of Derby, we've got our partners working with the University, but all those partners are separate academic entities. Some of them exist in the UK, some of them will exist internationally. And they will have their own regulations, they'll have their own institutions, they'll have their own students, they'll have their own staff, certainly if it's not the UK, if it's international, they will very much have their own culture. And that is quite an important skill. That is why this criteria is here because we are looking very much at somebody who can understand maybe those cultural differences. And while we're not aiming for a difference because the whole point of being an External Examiner is to look for parity in terms of academic standards, we also want to recognise that there can be a difference. So, we do want to just make the point here on that first slide that experience and that understanding is quite important and we'll see that as we go through. So, can we move on please? Okay. So first of the External Examiner role we're looking at standards of awards in our Partnerships and we're trying to make sure key things A and B they're credible and secure B irrespective of how or where they are delivered or who delivers them and I think it can be quite difficult and I was looking at the presentation in relation to Blackboard and the modules and I've been watching the chat in terms of some of the comments that people have been making and I think it's really important that when you go on to Blackboard you will see a different instance of the module if you're working with a collaborative partner. So, you'll see the main campus version, the Kedleston road version, which will normally have the code KR and then you will see different codes for different versions of the module. And I think a key point for me, it's really important that when you're looking at samples of student work as an External or you're looking at assessment briefs and you're verifying those that you are aware that every Partner is different and you're not putting them all together. So, when you look at a sample of work, you might be looking, some of our External Examiners are looking maybe across six academic partners for the same module. So, that consistency and parity is really important because you're looking at lots of different delivery locations maybe in the UK, internationally. You've obviously got those cultural considerations that I spoke about as well and contextualisation which is really important. But what you're trying to do, you're trying to recognise maybe that difference where that difference is acceptable, but make sure we have parative standards with our Academic Partners. And I think that's emphasised by the key ask at the bottom, which is saying make sure you reference each Academic Partner clearly in your report. I think for me one of the really important things when we're talking to Academic staff at the University and clearly you will be working in the Colleges and the Schools and the Institutes across the University, but one of our key briefs to the Academic staff when they're new to working with Academic Partners is imagine your different Academic Partner and your different Module Lead in an Academic Partner is a member of the teaching team on campus. So, if you had sessional lecturers working with you for example, you would make sure that everyone was aligned, everybody was using the same materials and the same assessments, people had been briefed in terms of the grading and the feedback to students etc. and you were talking regularly as one team. So, there was really good communication and with what we're saying we're saying exactly that's the brief and that's what the same brief we're giving to our External Examiners. What you need to do is make sure you're recognising each one of those Partners independently. I think I would say if you're not clear if A - there is a Partner and B - where that partnership is or how many Partners are running that module then please ask. So, it should be on your nomination, and also the Colleges should be able to advise. So, I think we can move on. Thank you. So, assessment verification is really important that I've mentioned. So, you will be looking at the assessments. You will be making sure the assessment is effective and the assessment is valid and reliable and also see the part in bold that I mentioned that each assessment is designed on and contextualised in accordance with the Academic Partner. So, when you're looking at the assignment briefs, you might only see one because it may be in your particular module there is just one assignment brief, and the actual brief is being used as it's written across every single Partner. But it may well be that if the module that you're looking at or the programme you're looking at runs with an international partner, it might be that there's a different variant of that assessment brief and that will be the contextualised variant. So again, you'll need to look and say, I'm happy with that contextualisation and we haven't lost anything in terms of that assessment. So, it might just be for example a different scenario, just a different case study that's more applicable to a particular country or a particular context. So, if we move on so assessed student work and feedback. So, again you will see samples and you saw with Blackboard demonstration you saw the External Examiners folder and you saw where the sample of work will be uploaded and one of the examples you saw was the downloaded version of work. Most Academic Partners they will be uploading their samples for the students. So, you'll probably find you can't go into Blackboard and Turnitin some of the things in the chat in the same way that you would be able to for a student on campus because those samples of work have been downloaded and been put in that External Examiners folder for you. So, you can look at things like rigor, credibility of awards, make sure the standards are secure, etc. The assessment criteria have been applied appropriately etc. And there is shared understanding between the team. So that goes back to my point about working as one team, about really good effective communication. That's what you're looking for between the home module leader and the module leaders in the various countries or in the different locations in the UK. As part of that process, you'll be looking at various things, and they're written down in terms of the bullet points. So, you'll be looking at module data. You'll be looking at information that's been given to students. You'll obviously see a sample of work and you'll see the grades on there and you'll see the feedback to students. So, if we can move on. Okay. Mentioned before visits to Academic Partners. So, this came up at a much earlier stage. Generally speaking, once in your tenure if it's a franchise programme, if it's a validated provision once every year. It's probably worth saying we are looking at that and I think the point was made earlier. I think Laura made the point earlier that sometimes there's a team of External Examiners looking after a programme and that programme may run at a particular Partner internationally and we're not necessarily going to take every single External. We wouldn't need to do that. So, they would be one a rolling program to make sure the Partner has a visit during that time and of course meeting Students, Staff and viewing resources. So, if you can move on translation sometimes relatively rarely now we might be delivering in a language other than English. It's not our normal practice to do that but we certainly have one international partner at the moment where we do deliver in a language other than English. If that's the case we will appoint a bilingual External Examiner. There might be other non-bilingual External Examiners that actually support that. So for example, if it is a business programme, there might be lots of different modules on that program and there might be lots of different subject areas and in that case the programme External who might cover one or two particular subjects will be bilingual but will be supported by a team of module Externals who might not be bilingual. But for the non-bilingual Externals, there will be translation. So, there is a Translation Policy in place at the University and all student work will be translated, and all relevant documentation. So, if you are a non-bilingual External, don't worry that you won't be able to access the information. You will be able to see that work in accordance with our Translation Policy. And also the part at the bottom, you might want to comment on the translation and the translation process; if there are any issues in terms of what you see which you think are relevant to the translation, you can make that comment and we can look at that and action that accordingly. So, if we then move on to the next slide. So, just to give you an idea in terms of UK Partnerships, this is just the scope of what we have. We have 12 active UK Partners at the moment. They tend to be local but we have a couple in the London area. The idea is widening participation for the Students. Thank you. And we've got a bit of a picture there of the UK Partners. Probably just worth saying that they're all different models. And I could have put a slide in, and I nearly did about the different models we have, but again, it's probably going into far too much detail. So, it's probably best to say most of them are franchise where it's a University of Derby programme. Then, we've also got some International Partnerships, 15 active International Partners we have located across nine different countries, a number of different programmes involved there. And then if we just switch on to the next slide that will show you some of the countries where and organisations where we are in partnership. So, most of it is franchise, some of it is validation and that is where it is the Partners programme that we validate at the University of Derby. We have a second one starting dual degrees where we have two degrees; a University of Derby award and also a Partner award as well. So, there are lots of different models that you might be involved with. Just on this next slide, just stay where we're at the moment. So just on this slide, it's fine. Just on a thank you slide. I think my advice to you would be it can be quite complicated, and I think that's one of the reasons why we put all the boxes on to show you the Partners. So, if you are an External Examiner and you're working with an Academic Partner it can be quite complicated because there can be a number of Partners. There can be a number of Boards. Colleges can run their operations in different ways. So, some Colleges for example would combine the Partner students in the home board. Some Colleges, if they have lots of Partners, would have a separate Assessment Board for all their Partners. So, I think my best advice to you is talk to your contacts in the College and make sure you know if you've got an Academic Partner where that Partner is, what the expectations are, and what the timelines are. So, make sure you're well organised so you actually know what's coming in. And I think that's everything for me now. Thank you. Oh, thank you Gail. Well, that was really informative. And just to let you know, I think the presentation slides had a mind of their own. My Colleague wasn't even pressing it. It kept moving on. So, we love a bit of technical problems just to round up the morning, don't we? But, you passed through that seamlessly. Thank you ever so much. I'm not seeing any questions in the chat, Gail, so I'm just going to see if anyone's got any now.
Doesn't look like it, but if anything comes through, Gail, we'll pass it on and thank you for being part of this morning. It's really appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to move on now to Professor Ian Whitehead, our Head of Pedagogic Innovation, Enhancement and Research. And I believe Ian's here. So, hi Ian.
And Hello. I am indeed here. And we can move on to the next slide. And it's been a long morning for colleagues, so, I can promise you that I will not be too long. But nice to meet you all virtually.
The University of Derby is actually one of the UK's largest providers of Online Learning. We've got just over six and a half thousand current Online Learners across a range of provision. Significantly large number of them actually are at undergraduate level where we do have three full undergraduate degrees, usually studied part-time by our Online Students; a range of top-up degrees, and then increasingly, kind of, an online first approach that we've taken to the delivery of a lot of our apprenticeship provision as well. But it is possible to study online with us right the way up to PhD level. We have a number of online doctorates as well as a range of PGCerts, PG DIPS, and MAs and MScs as well. And we also have an approach of supporting employability and working very closely with employers. So, a number of the modules that sit within those programmes can also be taken independently, as a, a certificate of credit as part of someone's professional development as well.
I think we can move on to the next slide. I think it's really important to emphasise that our online learners have a bespoke experience. So, they they are not kind of watching campus classes and kind of being add-ons to a a campus experience. They have a whole experience that is designed entirely around them. And so whilst they might be studying the same programme as students who are on campus, that programme will be taught separately to them in the online environment, with a whole range of additional support around it, which reflects the fact that those students could be anywhere in the UK, anywhere in the world, and therefore absolutely not necessarily coming anywhere near of our physical resources. And to do that, we have a series of principles that underpin the design of all of our online curriculum across the university, which is effectively our manifesto for our online learners. And we're very keen that within that we have real kind of stakeholder engagement with potential students, but also really critically with employers as well. And as I said a moment ago, what we really commit to for our students is a unified digital experience so that really they they feel that they're part of an online university of Derby campus. And to promote that, we also work very closely with a range of professional services across the the university and with the students union to create that kind of integrated digital environment. We can move on, I think.
Recently we have developed, rolled out and now use as part of our annual continual monitoring a range of online learning baselines, where we commit that all of our students will get a clear and consistent learning experience. We really make sure that what we build in is active and applied learning as well. So many of our students are already in employment and they're doing their online programme with us as part of moving forward professionally in that context. So, we create opportunities for them to do assessments based upon that work experience. But it's also active learning as well. So, what we don't have by online learning here at the university is basically situation where students might download a package of of things, work on them and then hand some assignments in at the end. So, it's not that kind of correspondence course model its very much an active learning model. We do need to make sure that all of our learning materials are inclusive, both in terms of abilities but also culturally, as well given that we could be we're dealing with a global audience. We want it to be an exciting experience. So it's really media rich in terms of how we design that and continue to improve the quality of that and and that's really all part making sure that our online learning environment is one that feels that it's a one for the future, rather than one for the for the past, and I think we we really do drive that digital agenda forward not just for the online learners but actually hopefully you'll see how that translates into a lot of what we do for our campus students as well.
We can move on, I think. We've got a range of dates for our academic calendar. You'll see from that that all of our online provision is delivered across a trimester system. So, you can see the dates that we have there going right the way through up to 2027-2028. So, students who are on a a standard route with us would normally be doing one module per trimester. So, 60 credits in a year. It is possible for students to go what we call an accelerated rate; so, they can do two modules per trimester and effectively then be almost what you will call a full-time rate of study. Has to be said most of our students are at that standard rate because they are kind of online for a reason. They're normally online because they've got family or work commitments which prevent them from going to their nearest campus or from engaging on a on a full-time basis.
We can move along the bus, I think. In terms of assessment boards for online learning we have one per trimester for each college, or institute, or school, which we'd hope for you to be able to attend and then we also have a separate one where all the university's online apprenticeship programmes are considered, and that happens at a slightly later date in in the cycle. All of our boards are combined module and progression award boards. So, we look at the module performance, and we look at the student progression and awards in at each stage in the year because students are joining at three stages in the year. So, we're also graduating students at three points in the year as well. In terms of everything else though, and crucially in terms of the academic regulations presentation that we had from Melissa earlier on, all of our online programmes operate in alignment with the same academic regulations as campus provision. What we will be hoping that you do through your board comments, and through your reports, however very similar to what Gail was saying earlier on is, making sure that where a programme does exist in both its campus form and its online form that we see we're seeing kind of a comparability of the student experience and student outcomes across the different modes of delivery. And I think that's it for that slide. Thank you very much.
And I think that brings us to a close of our session today. Ian did really well at bringing us into the final time. So, we've managed to kind of get back on track. So, thank you to everybody for attending today. I know that sometimes people say these things just because, but it genuinely comes from the heart, as an external examiner team we really care about our externals - always want to offer the best support, always want to make enhancements so that you have hopefully the best experience here at Derby and promote to programme teams and college colleagues the importance of that relationship. So, thank you ever so much for attending and for your interest in being an external examiner here. I hope I liaise with you all throughout your role, you know the contacts, I hope, to get any support from our team, and I look forward to working with you throughout your tenures here. So, thank you ever so much. I'm going to see if there's any questions before we bring it to a close but of course you know how to contact us if things come to mind following the presentation today.
External Examiners Induction Event November 2025 video
Back to About the External Examiner Role