Good morning and welcome, it's nice to see everybody and we look forward to you starting your tenure, or those that have already started, look forward to working with you at Derby. So, my name is Laura Waldram I am a Quality Monitoring Manager in the Center for Quality Assurance, but lead the External Examiner team operationally. If Richard is ready I'm going to hand over to the man of the hour, our head of Academic Quality, Richard Monk, thank you very much.
Thank you very much Laura, thank you for the introduction and just to start off with I'd also like to thank all of our new, and or recently appointed, External Examiners to the session this morning. It's obviously a critical role, part of our quality assurance arrangements and we're very grateful to you all for taking on the role and supporting the University in this way, so my thanks to all of you at the outset and I hope you enjoy your time and your tenure with the University. So the purpose of my session really is just to give a short overview of some of the external regulatory requirements and how those link into your role as External Examiners, and some of the things that are happening within the sector at the moment that we thought it would be useful to share with you. So in terms of, in sort of, recent months obviously we've had a change of government and one of the outcomes of that was an independent review of the Office for Students (OfS) as our sector regulator was carried out by Sir David Behan who has since become the new chair of the Office for Students. And the outcomes of that that review were, oh sorry slides just disappeared for a moment, the outcome of that review was a series of recommendations and within the review Sir David set out four priorities for the Office for Students, focusing on their role as the regulator moving into and Beyond 2035. So within there you can see the four areas four priorities that he set out which were around the quality of Higher Education, Financial sustainability, which I'm sure we're all aware is a is a challenge across the sector currently, the office for students acting in student interest and also protecting how public money is spent by institutions and across the sector. So what he was particularly keen to see is bringing all the different quality assurance methodologies together and looking and for the OfS to look at ways to devise an integrated assessment of quality, bringing together things like the TEF, the different quality assessments it undertakes, investigations under condition B3 about student outcomes, and look at how those can be brought together in an integrated way. Asking the OfS to focus more directly on sector finances and individual institutions and providing some support to the sector in that way. Also looking at student interest; whether the Office of Students should be given full consumer enforcement powers, so some of the functions currently undertaken by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), so many of you may be familiar with the acronym CMA, so focusing on students as consumers; looking at potentially a model student contract, these are some of the things that were suggested in the review report. But also using public money effectively, or to best effect, so looking at ways to reduce regulatory burden on the sector as a whole, and indicating that the OfS should consult and pilot changes before they're rolled out, so they can be embedded to best effect. So there's some potentially some quite significant changes on the horizon in the way that the Office for Students operates and how we might experience them as a regulator. So move on to the next slide please. So a couple of things that have come out recently from the Office for Students that of particular interest to to you as External Examiners; the first one particularly if you've been appointed as an External Examiner for one of our Academic Partnerships, or modules delivered by our Academic Partners. The Office for Students have very recently published one of its Insight Briefs focusing on subcontract arrangements, or franchising, as it's probably commonly known to many of us. Again that comes from both the previous and current government's interest in some of the risks associated with franchising given the significant increase in franchise relationships across the sector in the past few years. And some of the issues that have occurred within those types of relationships including issues around the quality of student outcomes, so often or sometimes there are, students perform less well in some of those types of relationships with different partners; so that's an area of interest, or an area of risk. Other issues around assessment and issues of academic misconduct. and contract cheating on occasions. Also, some issues with course quality and delivery, again impacting on student outcomes. So as External Examiners you'll be looking at assessments delivered by partners, and student outcomes, so that's a core area of focus across the sector at the moment, and a particular area of interest for the Office of Students as our regulator. An ongoing area of interest for the Office of Students for a number of years now has been graduate attainment rates and grade inflation, or concerns about potential grade inflation, so it has recently published its latest analysis of this which focuses on outcomes from the 22/23 Academic Year. So overall, across the sector, student outcomes have returned to the levels that were seeing pre-pandemic, so before various safety net and regulations were enforced to protect students during the pandemic period, but the OfS, as you would have seen in its analysis is still highlighting some concerns around the proportion of first class degrees being awarded across the sector. So again a key role of External Examiners is about protecting academic standards, looking at comparability of standards of student performance at the University, based on your experience at your own institutions and elsewhere where you've been an External Examiner, so you know providing informed comment on you know the quality of assessments delivered, the outcomes achieved by students, is a really vital part of your role and links in with the area this key area of interest for our regulator. So next slide please. So just a very very brief run through of the Office for Students conditions; so the Office for Students set a series of conditions of registration that all registered providers must meet and continue to meet. The B conditions are the conditions that focus on academic quality and academic standards; so B1 to B6. B6 is participation in the TEF, so these are just focused on B1, 3, 4 and 5 just briefly, So under B1 you can see there that all providers are expected to ensure that every course, and modules within those courses, deliver a high quality academic experience, and that includes those five bullet points there. How that might link into your role is perhaps on occasions you may be asked to look at potential curriculum modifications that might include a proposed new module, it might include amendments to other aspects of the programme where you might be asked to comment or give a view, an external expert view, on and with that in mind those are the types of things that you know we would expect you to consider when you're being asked to comment on changes to programmes. And also as you as you work through your role and you look at assessments, you look at student performance, and student work that might give you an indication as to whether all of those things are addressed in every programme, the programme is designed well it's delivering good outcomes for students and they're being assessed effectively. So that all links into condition B1, similarly condition B3 expects every provider to deliver what the OfS terms ‘positive outcomes for students’ and it sets minimum expectations for those; such as a minimum 80% continuation rate for full-time undergraduate students, for example. So when you're again, when you're looking at student work, student outcomes, student performance on modules and whether they're comparable with other modules, with modules that you're familiar with elsewhere, you know are there areas where you're concerned as an External Examiner about student outcomes, and how that might lead into continuation and completion? The next slide please. So perhaps one of the most fundamental conditions for External Examiners is condition B4, because it focuses very clearly on assessment. So as an External Examiner through processes such as assessment verification, moderation which you'll be directly involved in, that will enable you to make judgments about whether our assessments are effective; whether they're being designed effectively, whether they're being delivered effectively, and the impact they're having on student outcomes positively, or otherwise. And then through assessment verification you'd be making judgments about whether you think an assessment is valid, whether it's reliable, whether it's a secure type of assessment for students and then also that our academic regulations are followed in the way that our assessment process is carried out, again that's a key function of the External Examiner role and ultimately at the bottom there you see that any awards that are granted to students the performance of students on modules on programme are credible and standards are secure, so that's again a core part of the External Examiners role securing academic standards and commenting on the comparability of standards achieved by students at Derby against students you're familiar with at your own institutions and elsewhere. Lastly B5 focuses on sector recognised standards, so as part of that that includes generic classification descriptors for level 6 undergraduate degrees, so again they're a useful reference point in terms of student outcomes and the student performance you see on the modules you're responsible for and whether those student outcomes actually align with those classification descriptors. Next slide please. So just briefly to touch on the relationship between the Office for Students and the QAA; the QAA and the QAA Quality Code have been sort of decoupled, or removed, from the Office for Students Regulatory Framework, and that happened in 2022 when the OfS revised its conditions. QAA also ceased to be the designated Quality Body for England and has taken on its role in inspections and regulations since that point. The QAA does still however continue to be an important organisation; one which we're committed to as an institution as an important quality assurance organisation particularly quality code as a core reference point for quality assurance which the QAA have recently republished, in June 2024, and it continues to follow a similar format of a series of sector agreed principles of what good quality should look like; some key practices that we should all look to follow across the sector, and some advice and guidance which again is helpful in informing how we should go about some of these activities. Right at the bottom there absolutely fundamental principle within the Quality Code, and again something we're very committed to as an institution, is the importance of external expertise - your role as External Examiners is vital to how we secure academic standards, how we ensure we continue to deliver high quality programmes and outcomes for students, and we remain committed to that as many institutions do across the sector. Just move on to the next slide please. And lastly for me just a brief slide here because I know other colleagues are going to pick up on these in more detail. The Monitoring and Evaluation strand within the Centre for Quality Assurance, that I'm responsible for and Laura who you've already met leads on that area, will be the main source of support advice and guidance for you as External Examiners during your time with us. In terms of developments within the institution we have a large programme of work which consists of a number of projects it's called the Student Success Programme. So some of the projects within that include a review of our Academic Regulations, which you will see the outcomes of during your time as External Examiners with us, and some potential changes to our regulations, the digitization of our continual monitoring process which includes processes that you will engage with and some of you may already have seen and used that platform, we're also changing our approach to programme design and approval during this academic year and we've also upgraded our VLE, which Anick will talk to later. So it's fundamentally the Student Success Programme is about embedding our University Learning & Teaching Framework and our Curriculum Design Framework within everything that we do. So I think I'm handing on next to Professor Neil Fowler to give an overview as Provost Learning & Teaching, so thank you and I'll see you again later.
Good morning everybody, thank you for allowing me to join your meeting this morning to provide a bit of an Institutional overview on some of the key Learning, Teaching and Assessment related sort of philosophy that we have as an institution, and how that overlaps with the work that we really need from you as our External Examiners; helping us to ensure that our provision is the best that it possibly can be, and our students get the best possible chance of achieving the outcomes that we need them to achieve. Within the institution we've had now, for about two years, the established Learning, Teaching & Assessment Framework and its accompanying Curriculum Design Framework; and we brought these in, they replaced the previous Learning and Teaching Strategy, and they were quite deliberately designed in a way that provided as much agency as we could for those of our Colleagues who were designing programmes or designing learning engagements for our students with the sense that the principles contained within these Frameworks should be applicable to all types of students; so regardless of whether you are here Examining for us on more traditional 3-year campus-based taught Undergraduate programme, or you're working on one of our Online programmes, or with our Apprentice students, or in some of our taught Postgraduate provision, the same principles should apply and we would wish them to apply at the level of a whole programme; our philosophy and thinking behind the design of programmes right from their start. But also how do these apply at the level of individual learning activities. Now not every principle will apply in the same way at each learning instant, but we would still want our Colleagues to be thinking about that so say; How does you know what I'm doing on Thursday morning at 9:00 impact on the student sense of belonging? How am I building their resilience through these activities? How does the way in which I'm assessing the student? How does my summative assessment align with the formative assessment, and does that formative assessment help our students to build that self-efficacy? Do they understand the connection between the content of a module, and how the modules join together? And how that builds a sense of purpose for our students as they make their way through the academic journey, and I hope that and you'll see as I'm move on in a moment that you should start to see this being manifest in the way in which we're communicating those principles to our students in the module templates that you get opportunity to look at, when you have a look at assignment briefs, where we're asking you to support us with the verification of assessment, that hopefully you can start to see the messaging we're trying to give to our students to help them to realise the things that we're seeing within these two Frameworks and when you're looking at provision for us you know taking an eye at the content of the programmes and how does that relate to the Frameworks; particularly the Curriculum Design Framework, but also the approaches, the underpinning ways in which we're going about doing things and the connection between different parts of our provision so that you know that's what sits behind what we're doing the Frameworks you very deliberately loose in their nature they they're not a recipe book, if you like, they're a set of ingredients and we encouraging our Academic Teams and our colleagues across the provision that you're working with to take those ingredients and do you know fantastic and exciting things with them that are relevant to the context within which they're working, the student body that they have before them, and how this is applicable to those different learners at their different points on their developmental Journey. So if we can nudge on one slide please. Once we created those two Frameworks we set about trying to think well how do we bring this to life? How do we make sure that all of our provision is delivering against those principles that were contained in the Frameworks? But also what do we need to do to enable that? This can't all sit with our teams standing in front of the students on a day-to-day basis, what's the whole range, how do we make the ecosystem of the University support that approach to delivering the total experience for our students across their lifetime with us. And so we devised a number of projects that were looking at these different pieces of work. That was then rolled up into an overarching programme, and I hope during your time with us you'll become familiar with the language that we're using around the Student Success Programme. It is this collective approach to a number of strands of work, all of which intends to support teams across the institution, both Academic and Professional Service teams, to be working together with the student body in order to achieve the best outcomes for them and reflecting the University's critical missions. And they are probably best summed up by our commitment to Social Mobility. to ensure that all of our learners regardless of their background. have the opportunity to achieve their potential; so making sure that all of our approaches are fully inclusive across all of the dimensions that inclusivity should bring to the party but also that we need to be, as an applied University, that we are driven by Industry Engagement and within the University strategy that we have four pillars within that, the latest of those pillars that's been added to University strategies about Industry Engagement and that's really important to us because it is by being engaged with the industries and we take the broadest definition of industry in that regard not just traditional definition of industry it's all of the spheres and sectors that our students may wish to progress into and that we as an institution should be supporting so as a University we are about the creation and dissemination of knowledge, we are about the betterment of the society that that we sit within; both locally, nationally and globally, and so we need to make sure that our curricular are industry engaged, that we're being informed by where the sectors are going such that we're teaching our students the Knowledge and Skills that they will require for their future progression, but also that we're opening their eyes to the possibilities that as a student goes through a course they have the broadest possible understanding of the usefulness of the skills that they've developed, so that they've got the widest number of doors possible to open at the end of that pathway. So we're lifting them up to see their potential futures, not just the future that they may have had in mind when they first arrived at the institution. And so we can see the range of projects. I'm not going to read through the list of them, but there's a number of these projects that hope that you will see, through the work that you're engaging with, with the Academic Teams with the student work, that you see with the modules and engagements with the Programme Teams that you have I hope you'll see the manifestation of these and the way in which they impact upon the culture of learning and assessment that sits behind the programmes that we deliver most notable for this Academic Year have been the introduction of our new VLE; it's not really a new VLE, we were on Blackboard previously, we're on Blackboard still but we've moved to the Ultra wrapper for the VLE. And that's afforded us an opportunity to do quite a lot in looking at how are we using that VLE, not just as a repository for content but the ways in which we engage our students in their learning through the use of the VLE. It's given us an opportunity to update a number of the presentational templates that we use; so we have got new templates that are in use for the module specification that tells our students what the modules are about, and within those we've you know been much more explicit in asking teams to provide that chain of explaining the purpose of this module within the broader context of the programme; how do each of the modules connect together? Over the student journey what does it underpin? Why is this important to the study of programme X, Y or Z that the student may be on. But similarly with assessment that we we've changed the assessment briefs to draw out the purpose of each assessment more clearly, we hope, for our students, but also positioning that assessment in the whole path and journey of assessment, so taking a whole programme approach to the design of assessment such that these aren't just individual moments in time for a student we're telling this assignment here draws upon some that may have gone before or connect to those that come after it so that the students can see that pathway hopefully driving better engagement in the feedback that we provide through those assessments and scaffolding the learning of our students more obviously. And the other significant change within that domain has also been the sign posting of skills. And you'll see within the range of projects we have a project that's called Develop@Derby, the Develop@Derby project is about our curation and communication of skills training for our students; broadly across both curricular, co-curricular, extracurricular activities supported largely by our Library team, but not exclusively. It allows us to curate learning pathways for our students within LinkedIn learning that's available to our students and we've asked this year for Academic Teams to specifically map against the Skills Framework that we've developed, so the Skills@Derby, mapping of going okay if these are the core skills that we know employers are looking for how and where in your programme do you get opportunity to develop these and demonstrate them and if those skills are critical to a particular module here's the links to it and we're making that more obvious to our learners. That was done very well already in many places but this just gives us a slightly more co-ordinated way of doing it as a whole Institution. So there's a number of things that are going on across those different projects that will be relevant and a few of those that if we just pop on to what will be my final slide. How that then manifests in terms of the priorities for us, and again my call to action to you if you like as a a group of External Examiners these are the key challenges that we're seeking to meet through that range of projects on the Student Success Programme and where we wish to engage your help in supporting us to make sure that the activities in each and every one of our programmes is taking us on that right journey for delivering against those and as an institution committed to Social Mobility it should come as no surprise that addressing awarding gaps is first and foremost upon that list that of course includes addressing the ethnicity related Awarding Gap. We pleasingly made some good progress on that this year but we know we have a long way to go in reducing those gaps and yeah there's some targeted work that we're doing on that as an institution and with colleagues in each of the Colleges to seek to better understand the barriers faced by students from a range of different ethnic backgrounds and making sure that our curriculum meets their needs. We're removing those barriers to equality of opportunity and many of you will be familiar with the OfS, and the Access and Participation Plan, and their sort of E-OR that that they have, so the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register, that we're bringing to bear across the provision that we have but that also links into different aspects of Social Mobility we know we have a significant challenge with students from lower socio-economic background so IMD quintiles one and two where students don't do as well as we would wish them to do because of some of the barriers to learning and that's not just about the content of programmes that's about our delivery models that's about the assessment tools that we're using and we would wish to sort of engage with you to help to make sure that the changes that we're bringing to bear demonstrate that equality of opportunity that we're seeking to do. We have made good progress in the last couple of years in trying to enhance first time and on-time submission; we know that students do better when they're able to do that work in a timely fashion. And that leads to improvements in first time pass rates, and we have been measuring that as a performance indicator for programmes over the last year and a bit, but it's really important because we know that the outcomes from re-assessment are not as good as those of students who engage with the assessments first time. And so this isn't about inflating grading, this isn't about making it easier for students to get across the line by lowering the hurdle, it's about making sure that we have got the right modes of assessment, that we're assessing students on the real skills that actually matter, that we're making sure that they're scaffolding their learning in order to be able to succeed but also that we've got the right support for our students in place. You noticed possibly on the previous slide that you know one of the things that we've been trying to do through partnership with our Student Support Services is reduce the number of students who have automatic extensions to their assignment submission deadlines because of possibly statemented learning difficulties that they had; well actually our assessment should be inclusive by design, they should be able to give that work in at the same time as all other students rather than having a you know a uniform extension to submission deadlines. And by doing that, that should allow better flows of assessment, better balancing as a load of Assessments students go through. And whilst we don't specifically ask you as Examiners to get involved in levels 3 and 4 of our programmes, most of your focus is on levels 5 and 6 if it's undergraduate provision obviously level 7 if you're supporting us on a postgrad programme, but it's really important that we drive up performance in those earlier levels and you know we would welcome your support even if it's by looking at the assessments that we're using at high levels of programmes and going well these are the lessons that we're learning from that in terms of what we're seeing in the underpinning coming through from levels 3 and 4. And crucially the final aspect, I've already talked about Industry engagement, and that's about raising student agency in developing their employability; we can't make opportunities for students, we can't do it for them, and we would welcome your feedback on the extent to which our assessment tools are preparing our students for that journey to employability, are we authentically assessing students on the work that they need to be equipped for their future? And is that being drawn out in the feedback that we give to students in the work that they've done for us? And I can see that Laura has popped up visually on my screen, which I think is my cue that I've come to the end of my time which unusually I've actually finished on time Laura so I shall pass the batton to you to lead us on to the next part of this morning and just finish by saying thank you to you all as External Examiners; you play such a critical role for us in supporting the academic development that we're on so thank you, thank you for your commitment thank you for coming along today I look forward to opportunities to engage with you during your time working with us, Laura over to you.
Thank you Neil, that was wonderful, and very well timed indeed, thank you so much for coming along this morning. Brilliant okay so back to myself for the next part, also just to say please feel free to post any questions in the chat or put your hands up at any point, we want to hear from you so if you have got anything you want to ask, please don't hesitate. So I'm going to talk about now the role of our External Examiners at Derby and the aim of my part of the presentation is to introduce the External Examiner team, provide an overview of the information available to you, to help support you in your external examiner role, identify key contacts for you throughout your tenure, review key responsibilities and explore critical issues surrounding the External Examiner role. I'm sure some of you are familiar with this topic already but I wanted to talk to you about our new account setup at Derby, in terms of the University of Derby account and access to University of Derby systems. Then finally just want to consider some key detail that will hopefully help you to carry out your duties and responsibilities here effectively, so thank you. Okay so first of all I just wanted to outline our team here for you at Derby this is a lovely slide for me because they're a wonderful team and very helpful and I hope that you all get that experience too, which I'm sure you will. So, starting off with who you've met already our Head of Academic Quality is Richard Monk and then there's Paula Bushby who's our Quality Manager that focuses on the monitoring and evaluation work stream, the External Examiner work stream and our Continual Monitoring. Then there's myself, I'm the Quality Monitoring Manager as mentioned and lead more operationally supporting the team and what is lovely, I do get to have that contact with you as External Examiners now and again and particularly at the moment with the account switch. We have Jen Kerr who's our Senior Quality Monitoring Officer and Helen Crook who's our Quality Officer here at Derby and then we have a lovely bunch of ladies that are our Quality Administrators, so we've got Caroline Harvey, Deborah Niblock, Rene Phillips, Sabrina Cutillo and Zoe Pritchet. The mailbox which I'm sure you're familiar with is at the bottom of this slide, I always say that it's manned 24 hours which I don't know why I say that I think it just feels like that sometimes. It's a very busy mailbox as you can imagine but they are a wonderful team and just so you know your queries will get responded to, we work tirelessly to hopefully support you as much as possible. They will be acknowledged, and we will get to replying as soon as possible. At times you'll probably hear from us with some prompts or communications to keep you updated. Thank you very much, so on to the next slide, this is just outlining really the key induction information that you receive as External Examiners here, most of this you would receive upon appointment, I know you're new external examiners, there will be a few of you that have been in post for a couple of months and some that are brand new and probably haven't got this information just yet. So, upon the approval of appointment via email from our team you will receive details of your appointed duties, so the programmes and modules that you've been approved for and will review as part of your External Examiner duties. You'll also receive extracts from the University's academic regulations and a key sort of change from them that has been quite recent is that our External Examiner tenure length is changed from four years to five, with the view that any sort of extensions from that point are only in exceptional circumstances, so it is five years from the start of tenure now. You will receive the annual report form template, and you will submit the annual report annually and then are able to claim your fee, so you will have details included on how to claim your fee and expenses. There will be some guidance included on setting up your University of Derby account, gaining access to our systems such as the VLE Blackboard Ultra and also our QMEP Quality Monitoring and Evaluation Platform. There will be some details around frequently asked questions, information about roles and expectations, additionally if you have been allocated a mentor and are quite new to external examining then you will get details of that Mentor revealed to you at that point for you to establish contact. All of the above are available on our External Examiner website and we are really proud of that website, hopefully it's user friendly but it does have a lot of information, so if you're ever unsure please use that as a source of support. When you access our VLE and the Blackboard platform then you will receive more specific information around programme, modules and any sort of previous External Examiner annual reports and responses will also be visible via Blackboard. Thank you, so again this slide just refers to local quality contacts apart from ourselves that will be supportive to you in your role here. These would be identified in your appointment email, which I've spoken about on the previous slide, they will, it will include things like your Programme Leader which is usually the main point of contact here for you at Derby and that relationship is obviously really important, information around Module Leaders, Heads of Discipline, Course Directors, Heads of Departments and Heads of Schools and there will also be information around the College Registry teams. There is a generic mailbox for each College and that would be made aware for you and there for you to contact around particular College queries and there's also information around the Online Programme Services team. Thank you, next slide please, so there's a list here which you can refer back to, I'll just gloss over this slide quite quickly but there's some key reference points here for you in terms of your role here, the induction information that I've mentioned. Also, I like to think External Examiners, you know, you have that community so there'll obviously be external examiners in your own institutions, so please seek them out and sort of share best practice and have that support network around you. There's some links here, I’m sure you've heard of them but the QAA UK Quality Code for Higher Education and a specific link to the advice and guide for external expertise, Advance HE's External Examining Handbook, we've included the link there for you to get to that. Then more specifically to the University of Derby there's information on the academic regs for students on taught programmes and also our web page which I've previously mentioned for our External Examiners and then hopefully you will become aware of any sort of local documentation that's more College focused and provided at that local level, thank you very much. So we've mentioned Advance HE and this is hopefully something that could support with professional development if you were interested, so Advanced HE offers a personal development course for new but also existing External Examiners that delivers practical approaches to reinforcing the UK standards of External Examining and again we've provided the link there for you to access if that was of interest.
Okay now into the nitty-gritty, so this is a slide about your appointment here at Derby so as I've already mentioned it's a five-year tenure for most of you at this point, extensions can be applied but only in exceptional circumstances, so an example of that is if a programmes closing and phasing out you might be asked to extend your tenure to support the closure of that programme and complete any sort of outstanding duties. A key thing for us and definitely a very busy category in our mailbox that I referred to earlier is around the reallocation of duties, so these would always be agreed with your Programme Leader and obviously you should be very much involved in that communication. So then there might be times where modules get added to your duties or removed and there might be changes. So that would include a reallocation of duties form that our team would process, we would then enable the relevant access to systems and also there might be circumstances where temporary or urgent reallocation of duties are needed. So that would be in circumstances where we would need you to step in potentially just to mitigate risk and ensure certain duties are covered and it's just really important for me to highlight that it's really crucial for us that we get those duties correct to give you the best experience possible, obviously to make sure you've got access to the systems, that our data is accurate so systems are populated correctly, but also to prevent any moderation delays or impacts on assessment boards and our students of course. So types of External Examiners here at Derby we have Subject Externals, Programme Externals and the Chief External Examiner role and the other point really is just to highlight around resignation, obviously we hope you never want to leave us and we might stop you but ideally we would ask for six months’ notice as referenced in the academic regs just to allow for that replacement and mitigation of risk. Okay thank you, so I'm sure you've all been desperately waiting for this one I know that I recognize some of the names here today and you've been exchanging emails with me, before I go into this slide I just want to say a huge thank you for the patience and perseverance that you've all provided, obviously any change to a new system isn't always smooth and we have had some teething problems, hopefully, she says, coming out the other side now, so this is our new way of setting up access and mailboxes at Derby and basically there's been a change. So from the 17th of September we needed to change the way that we set up our External Examiners to enhance many sorts of outcomes from certain projects but also to ensure a more seamless experience and access for yourselves. So now all External Examiners are provided with University of Darby mailbox and this would be your Ment number @Derby.ac.uk, so all communications not only from our team but from Colleges as well would be sent to this UoD mailbox and your Ment number is provided from our team in your initial appointment letter. If you're ever unsure of that number, then please just contact us and we can provide that quickly to you. These would be the same credentials that you sign into Blackboard Ultra and QMEP for and all automated notifications from those systems would be sent to that mailbox as well. So you would receive them for Quality Monitoring and Evaluation Platform but also Blackboard Ultra. The important thing to highlight is that this needs to be checked regularly to just ensure that you've got that consistent access, I do know that that can be quite fiddly for people and you obviously have your own access to mailboxes not only at your own institution but personally as well so I do understand it can be a change in approach but we have wanted to standardize things here at Derby and we feel this is a very important move to sort of enhance the success of key projects but your experience too. So there's some benefits listed there that hopefully you can engage with and our support is there throughout the process of setup but also throughout your tenure so you're not on your own with it and hopefully it will become even more smoother. Thank you next slide please, so what you can expect from Derby, so you would be advised of changes to University assessment regulations you would expect to be consulted if module assessment strategy or methods are amended, we ask that you verify assessment briefs and examinations prior to the start of module delivery you, would review a sample of assessed work commenting on achievement of learning outcomes, the standard of work and evidence of internal moderation. You are able to review level four modules, sorry Zoe thank you, if required and requested by yourself or by the programme team and sometimes you are asked to review modules if required and requested and that includes level three.
Thank you, so key responsibilities verifying the university standards are appropriate to awards taking into account the level descriptors also assist in the maintenance of academic standards, by enabling that comparison of student performs assist the University in ensuring that the assessment process is valid and fair. So that would be through the assessment verification and moderation of student work and we really value your input on curriculum design and development, you're our critical friend and that's really important to us here at Derby. So, to ensure that currency, relevance and coherence of curricular material and we obviously can't go through a presentation without mentioning our Vice Chancellor Katherine Mitchell who's the chair of academic board as well and all of the work we do obviously feeds into that bigger picture, so thank you very much. In terms of reviewing samples of work as I mentioned this will be via Blackboard and we've got a presentation shortly around Blackboard Ultra, so I know when people see this slide it obviously states a maximum of 250 pieces, that would be the maximum and it's a local arrangement and it's important that you confirm them sampling requirements with your programme leader. It would include all modes of assessment that contribute to the calculation of the award or its classification and usually is done by a sample size so calculated as the square root of the total number of students undertaking that assessment. So, it would be a minimum of five or the total number of students if it's less than five, the sample should reflect the full range of grades awarded and all the delivery modes and locations of each module and also taking into account that recognition of prior learning. Thank you, I'm going to kind of skim over these slides, this is more around assessment boards, and I think the main message to take away is that the assessment board processes are managed by our College Registry operations teams so they will be your main point of contact for assessment board information. Also as Richard mentioned in his earlier slides we do have an academic regs review taking place at the moment and the assessment board processes and structure is incorporated within that, so there could be some changes on how they are managed at Derby. But currently we operate a one-tier assessment board where both modules and progression will be considered, there's the main Summer boards, Spring boards and then the September boards as well. Usually, we would obviously expect for at least one External Examiner at each board, and we do have a role that we've had at Derby for a couple of years now for the College Level External and they're basically there to make sure that due process is followed and that they've not got any concerns. We also have academic partner boards and online learning boards and as mentioned the volume of assessment boards can differ and are very College specific. So, if there's PSRB requirements for example then there seems to be more boards throughout that academic year. Thank you, so we have the academic partner and online learning assessment board, so they're in addition to our standard boards and they are boards that you are expected to attend but you would have that identified to you in your local induction. It would be confirmed at the start of the academic year with your Programme Leader and if you are attending more boards than expected then obviously, we will try to reflect that in your fee and the College would confirm that. Also, in terms of online learning, there's three assessment boards per year and you wouldn't be expected to attend all of these but can do if you wish. Thank you, so the next slide is more around visits to site wherever that may be but normally it would be once or twice a year in some cases that's to view student work. Obviously dependent on the College and subject attended assessment boards as mentioned and then if you're involved with academic partners then you may be asked to visit academic partners and that's sometimes shared across External Examiners within that team, so once a year for validated programmes or once every four years for franchised programmes. Thank you, so again I'm mindful of time but this is on reports and responses, so we have our annual report, which is a University of Derby template, your annual report is expected within four weeks of the assessment board, we have our Summer boards and Autumn boards and we've recently made a change so we do split the reports out for these board. So, if you have duties that are feeding into the Summer boards and the Autumn boards we do expect two separate reports now to coincide with those cycle of time frames. You are paid on receipt of your report and they're submitted electronically to the mailbox that I've mentioned and also made available to our students and collaborative Partners. The Programme Leader is required to make a full response to your report within six weeks of receipt of that and we would provide that to you once we've received that and it's gained approval as a team, you will probably get sick of hearing from us but our team are responsible for sort of sending reminds us chasing you and supporting you with any queries. What I would say is you know our communication is central so that comes from the programme teams as well so if we have got something slightly wrong, please just let us know and we'll obviously correct that as soon as possible. Any queries around moderation time frames would be more specifically answered by the programme team, so they should provide you with that timeline and also queries around assessment boards as mentioned previously are more College based so that would be the Registry operations teams or the Online team, thank you. I'm going to skim over this one so this is more around our cover and termination policy, so if you were unable to perform your duties as stated in our academic red regs then we would ask you to notify your Programme Leader and we can look to make alternative Arrangements, we would normally ask another External Examiner to take cover or temporary responsibility for that External Examining work and I suppose the most important thing is the report is such a key part of your duties, so the submission of that annual report is vital really and confirms that engagement, so we do expect that and failure to submit it could result in termination. Thank you, so finally I'm just going to go into what you should expect to receive from the programme team, so that's specific module information, draft assessments and assessment verification forms via the QMEP platform, which Paula is going to talk about shortly. That appropriate sample of marked work via the folder within Blackboard, a complete results list including the mean and standard deviation, via QMEP and a completed internal moderation form via QMEP as well. We'd also expect you to have up-to-date programme information, a formal response to your annual report and the key thing for me is that local induction so that you are aware of timelines and communication and I think that sort of sets the scene for such a positive relationship, because we know you're already busy people and it's important for you to be able to factor that into the other work that you have going on, so please engage with your Programme Leaders and ask for those timelines within that communication. Thank you, next slide please, some of this goes without saying but I think to be an effective External Examiner it's that two-way relationship as I've mentioned between yourself and the programme teams. Communication and that transparency is really important and just that regular contact to kind of maintain that relationship really. As a team we're here to support you with that, if you feel that you know you've lost contact with your programme team then please reach out to us and we will support to reestablish that. We hope that you submit good reports, which I'm sure you will do, there's lots of guidance and advice on our External Examiner website, we'll hopefully receive good responses in return and just getting to know the programme and feeling comfortable with what you're reviewing here at Derby and of course if there are any major issues that to the relevant people and contacts. Thank you, a final slide from me I think nearly, so this is just around some of the engagement opportunities we offer and updates from our team, so we do have College led External Examiner forums, some are taking place after the central induction today. They take place twice a year and there for our new External Examiners but existing External Examiners as well and as a chance for you to come together with colleagues within the Colleges and fellow External Examiners within your area. We have our web pages, hopefully you received that key communication from us to your Derby mailbox, don't forget that and that will be from our team around any updates or key information. We're hoping to relaunch a newsletter and another just ask from me is if there is a change in your work circumstance or change of contact details, please let us know just so we can do the conflict of interest check again and just check everything's ticking all the right boxes, so that would be brilliant thank you. I'm definitely going to skim over this one because I'm going to hand over to Paula to go into this in a lot more depth but obviously, I've mentioned assessment verification and moderation already so that's the role of our External Examiners for continual monitoring, it will be using the QMEP platform form and as mentioned those communications from the programme leader are very key in terms of those timelines. The samples of student work will be on Blackboard and really just to say we're there for support, any sort of moderation issues, queries around your appointed duties just please reach out to us. You know we really do want to help, and you are very important to us and that's not just a term that I'm saying, we're very passionate as a team about what we do so we hope we can support you along your journey. Thank you, next slide please, oh that was it, I think I ran over time a little bit but thank you ever so much for listening. I think all of that was like important detail that you needed to hear, so we'll have time for questions at the end or please pop them in the chat but a reminder of our mailbox there and as I say please come to us if you have any questions. Paula is patiently waiting I'm sure, so I'm going to hand over to Paula Bushby our Quality Manager to talk about QMEP, thank you very much.
Thanks Laura. So as Laura's just said, well can I say good morning everyone. First of all, my name is Paula Bushby, I'm one of the Quality Managers within the Centre for Quality Assurance here at Derby and so I work very closely with both Richard and Laura. Can you just move back Zoe, please, to the previous slide, thank you. And my role involves leading on developments relating to monitoring and evaluation. So, my part in this induction session this morning is to introduce you to the University's New Quality Monitoring and Evaluation Platform or QMEP as you've heard it referred to. I am aware that that some of you have already come across it and have used it, most likely for assessment verification, and if that is the case then I'd like to thank you for your engagement with it so far. It is a brand new system and it's been built bespoke for us and so as is often the case we did encounter some early issues with access and permissions and so I'd like to thank you very much for your patience and understanding if this affected you as we navigated our way through those early issues, and particularly if you were involved in helping us to problem solve, and was sort of used as guinea pigs a little bit early on, but hopefully that should all now be resolved as a result of the way that we're now setting up our External Examiner accounts, and so I hope that the experience of QMEP will be much smoother from now on. I have got some slides to go through, I'll try and go through them reasonably quickly because I'm aware that it's break after me and I don't want to delay you too much from your break if I can, so I will try and skip through them, but just to say the slides will be shared with you afterwards so, if I do skip over things quite quickly, don't worry too much, the slides will be there for you to use and to access any links and information later on if you need to. Next slide please. So just to give you a little bit of context, and this links into what Neil Fowler was speaking to you about earlier and the development of our Learning Teaching and Assessment Framework, as part of that work we identified five main quality assurance and enhancement activities that we now represent as this cycle of activities to be completed each time a module runs. And these five module quality assurance activities became the focus of the continual monitoring digitisation project, which as Neil said is part of the University's Student Success programme, and that started about two years ago now. Next slide please. So, our student voice activities all already had digitisation work in progress, and so the continual monitoring digitization project focused on assessment verification, both internal and external moderation of assessed student work, again internal and external, and then our self-evaluation processes. And this work has been supported by a number of other developments that have taken place over the last couple of years, particularly to do with the provision of data for our academics, and that's helped us to deliver the project's strategic requirements. Next slide please. And so, the project resulted in the development of QMEP, our new online application, and this went live in July in Readiness for the start of this coming Academic Year, and the aim of QMEP is that it will simplify and streamline those essential continue monitoring processes, especially for you as External Examiners, and your involvement with the assessment verification and moderation processes. Next slide. So QMEP brings with it a whole host of benefits and those that particularly apply to you is that you are able to access those processes on that one online platform, and that allows you to complete your part of those processes in the QMEP app too. The flows for those processes are automated, and they provide automated email notifications and reminders, and the emails contain a link which when you click on it will take you directly to the work that you need to do. Next slide please. Documents such as assessment briefs and exam papers will be provided to you as attachments within the app, and there's also the ability for you to be able to refer processes back to the Module Leader if you feel that there needs to be changes or clarifications. You can see and leave comments for others in the process flow to view and also to respond to. Next slide please. And then there are other benefits for us here at the University of Derby, including reporting dashboards, auto storage, and auto archiving. But enough of me telling me telling you about it, I have got a short video to show to you which will give you a bit of a preview to QMEP. If this doesn't play sort of smoothly for you for any reason, don't worry about that, it's probably to do with your local bandwidth and the same with the sound. And we have tested it. It does work. So, if you're not seeing things particularly well or you're not hearing things, it's probably to do with your local Wi-Fi or connection. But it will be in the slides for you to be able to look back afterwards if you want to. The sound is just music, so if you're if you're not hearing any sound, it's not essential to the content of the video. So, Zoe, if you're able to move on to the next slide please and play the video.
[Music]
Thank you for that, so next slide Zoe, please. So then onto the important stuff for you. So, all of the information and guidance about assessment verification, moderation of assessed student work and using QMEP is available to you via those External Examiner web pages that Laura referred to earlier. There's also a link to be able to access QMEP directly from those web pages as well if you don't want to wait for those automated emails to come through. But when you access QMEP, you'll be asked to sign in and you should do that using the email address that's been provided with you as part of your account setup and the associated password. And then if you do get an app permissions box appearing, please just select allow. Your account has been provided with the appropriate licensing and permissions, and so there shouldn't be any further issues now with accessing the platform. However, when there is work for you to do in QMEP you will have received an automated email notification which will come from the quality monitoring mailbox, and as I said, those email notifications will also contain the link that you can use. Next slide please. And then once in QMEP itself you should find it simple and intuitive to use. The home screen gives you some options to be able to change the appearance such as the font size and colour theme, so you can adjust it to best suit your needs. You can access guidance, and you can return to this screen at any time by clicking on the University of Derby logo in the top left corner. The ‘my tasks’ area allows you to quickly and easily see where input is needed from you, so in that area there will be a list of any forms awaiting input from you. Next slide. And then within a form you can easily navigate to the different sections using those subway buttons on the left-hand side of the screen. These will be green if a section's being completed, yellow if there's work for you to do, and they'll still be clear if there's if a section's not yet been started. So, you can very quickly sort of see on the slide here that the external dot is yellow so if you click on that it takes you straight to that section of the form and that's the bit that you need to complete on. Three main functions when you're working in a form: you're able to save it, and that saves what you've done and allows you to come back to it at another time if you wish to; you can refer it to loop the form back to the Module Leader for clarification or for changes; or you can submit, and that progresses the form to the next stage in the process and that then triggers an email notification to the next person in the flow to let them know that there's work for them to do. Next slide. And then in addition you'll be able to view any attachments to a form that have been provided for you, see any comments that have been provided by others in the process flow, and add your own comments too if you wish. Next slide. And then if you do find that you need more information or guidance as I said, this is available to you via the External Examiner pages on our website. Next slide. And then if you find that you need more specific support, this is available to you via the Quality Monitoring mailbox. I know that many of you have already used that and it's great to see some familiar faces here having communicated with some of you already around QMEP. And then very quickly last one. And then for anything relating to timing of assessment verification, moderation of assessed student work, or assessment boards, please just continue to use your usual contact points in the College, and as Laura said the External Examiner mailbox for anything relating to your External Examiner duties. So, a little bit of a whiz through for me but that does bring me to the end of my bit.
Okay. Hello everybody, good morning, I'm Annick Fructoso, I'm a Learning Technologist here at the University, and so today I'm going to give you a brief overview of Blackboard Ultra. So, I'm just going to go through a few slides, and perhaps I'll try to do a demo in the live environment so it's a bit clearer. So, if we can go to the next slide thank you. So, Blackboard Ultra is our new digital learning environment, so as it was mentioned this morning, it's still Blackboard but it's Blackboard Ultra. So, Blackboard Ultra is being rolled out to all the module from September 2024. We had a few early adopters last week which, last year sorry, which enable us to refine the template and review the template and finalize everything for this Academic Year. So, the move to Blackboard Ultra, lots of improvement, it's a lot more user friendly, I would say, it's a new look, a fresh look, and lots of additional features to enhance the user experience. All the modules are creating, are created, using the University of Derby Blackboard Ultra template, so the template has been designed to help staff to structure their module but also to provide some consistency across the institution, and to ease the navigation, to have the same navigation in each module, so hopefully it just makes it easier for everybody having the same navigation within each module. And there is also, hopefully, a simplified process for the External Examiners which we going to have a look at. Can I have the next slide please, thank you. So, to go to Blackboard Ultra you will need to log into learn.derby.ac.uk, I think the address has been rebranded to learn, so it's learn.derby.ac.uk, and you will enter your University username and password so it should be your MENT account. If I can go to the next slide thank you. Once you logged into Blackboard Ultra, so, it's the same process as Blackboard I guess it was before, so you will need to navigate to the module on the left-hand side section, and then you will be able to access the modules from the right-hand side section. So, you will be able to select the module you need to review by clicking on the module on the right-hand side section. So the Module Leader will provide you work to moderate in probably in two ways, sometimes it will be in the External Examiner folder, and sometimes depending on the assessments you might want to see some specificity, like there is for example audio feedback, so you might need to access directly the live assessment, so they might give you access as well to the live assessment to the submission point. So, there's two ways to access the students work really in Blackboard for you. If I can go to the next slide. So that's what we're going to have a look. So, the first, the first example, which is accessing the External Examiner folder in Blackboard. So, the External Examiner folder is located completely at the bottom of the page usually, so I'll show you that in the live demo in a minute, but you've got the course content page, which is listed on the screen here where the templates been applied, so I think you've got about your module section, the other the second section is module assessment and submission, then we've got the weekly, or the unit sections, and the last item on the page is the External Examiner folder. When you click on the External Examiner folder it will open up and you will have access to two folders, one will be the sample of coursework. When you open it up you will be able to see the sample of coursework, and the other folder is for any other documentation that might need to be uploaded as well. So that's the first way to access the External Examiner folder or the sample of coursework you need to review. The other way, so you might need to access directly the assessment, in that case again in the course content area of the module you will be able to see a section which is called module assessment and submission which is highlighted in here in Orange, and from there when you open it up you will be able to see two folders. So, I don't know if it's really clear again, I'll go into my sandbox in a minute to show you that. You will see two folders for the submission point one and two, and within each folder you will have the submission point to access, so in that example I think I've got to Turnitin assessments where you can access it really and see all the submission from the student and the feedback. Can I have the next slide. That's the demo then. So, I'm going to share my screen now and give you an overview in the live environment if that's okay, so I'm just going to share my screen, can everybody see my screen now? Yes, I guess it's a yes, okay, so I'm in, thank you, I'm in Blackboard now. I'm logged into Blackboard with my account, so I might zoom in a little bit, so you can see a bit better. So, on the left-hand side here I will need to access the modules, so if you click on modules here and on the right-hand side you will have all the module listed. So, I'm going to choose my sandbox for the demo here, so I'm going to click on the module. So if you click on the module you will have the course content area here, and on the top you've got a toolbar, a navigation toolbar, but if we concentrate on the course content you've got the about your module section here, which is the first section, where you will be able to see the or students are able to see the module handbook, a welcome video, the module lead and the tutor, lots of information. There's also a student support folder here with lots of useful link for the students with develop at Derby, the Library, College Student Centre, Etc. And all these items are sort of collapsable, so it's a collapsible menu, so when you want to open it up you click on it and if you want to close it you can click on it again. So, the kind of collapsable items. So, you've got about your module, you've got the module assessment and submission, which I'll come back to in a minute, and you've got a lecture recording folder here where all the lectures’ recordings are, and then you've got your weekly sections, or week, or units, where all the content for each week or unit is provided here for the students. And as I mentioned earlier the last item on the page, so if you scroll down, you will see the External Examiners folder here, which is hidden from students, so student cannot see that that folder. If I open it up by clicking on it, you will have the folder with the sample of coursework, again you'll just need to click on it to open it up, and you will be able to access the sample of coursework here or any other documents you might find in this folder here. So, it's quite easy to access, it's the last item on the page, you open up the folders to, you open up the folder to access the content in a sense. The other option which I mentioned earlier to access the submissions from the students if there is specific element you might want to see which are not accessible in a downloaded format, so if there's audio feedback for example or specific element that cannot be seen in a downloaded document, you might want to access it through the module assessment and submission here, so again if I open up the module assessment and submission here, so here you will find the assessment guidance, the assessment brief, that should be uploaded by academics there, and you will have two folders, so for submission one and two, and again when you open up the folder, here, I've got an example of a Turnitin assignment, so if you click on the assignments you should be able to view all the submissions there. I mean that's just an example, so by all mean, it's just a draft I think, I try to create so you will be able to access all the submission for the student here, so here I've got a submission for ‘My Demo’ student that I can access from there. I think, I think that's about it unless anybody has any specific question about accessing information on Blackboard.
Thank you very much Annick Fructoso for the update on BlackBoard Ultra, I think Jo Cooke is here so I'm going to hand over to Jo.
Thank you very much, good morning everybody, my name is Jo Cooke and I am the Director of Student and Academic Services and I'm responsible for The Registry and everything that sits within The Registry and I'll run through today what exactly that is and then you can ask me any questions as we go along.
If we go on to the next slide please. The Registry is our directorate through which all of our students are administered. We have a centralised administration model here at Derby and the benefit of this is that we are able to control the administration of the whole student journey to ensure that it's consistent throughout the whole piece. The Registry is made of a number of different areas which is Admissions, College Registry Operations, FE and Skills, Programme and Curriculum Management, Registry Operations, Student Policy and Regulations and Student Services; I will take each one by one.
If you move on to the next slide please. The first team is our Admissions Team - our Admissions Team covers both undergraduate and postgraduate admissions, includes an Admissions Enquiries Team and they deal with the majority of our admissions at Derby, there are some admissions that take place elsewhere but mostly it's all coming through our Admissions Team at Derby. As you would imagine they work very closely with UCAS and also our International Team to support our international admissions. They are heavily involved in clearing each year which is led by our External Relations Team and we have recently introduced an Admissions Enquiries Team which is probably about a year old now and I'll talk a little bit about the face to face element of that as we go through this morning.
If we go on to the next slide please. Our College Registry Operations Team are the team that deals with the coalface in terms of our academic colleagues out in the colleges and we are actually clustered into two College Registry Teams under two Heads of Business Operations working across four colleges and that's to bring efficiencies and consistency. The four colleges are: Arts, Humanities and Education, Business, Law and Social Sciences, Health, Psychology and Social Care and Science and Engineering.
We have clustered our Arts and our Science and Engineering into one cluster and Business and Law, Health, Psychology and Social Care into the other cluster. As part of these teams we have four assistant College Registrars and they specialise in particular elements. They focus on partnership operations, placements, service design and also student performance and support. Everything else that we deal with is the academic programme advice, attendance monitoring, programme support, student advice and guidance, the student profile, assessment and management. I'll talk to you about how we do front facing in a minute but at the moment these teams are dealing with the academic colleagues as a face-to-face service. What we are trying to do is drive through consistency; because we used to have four teams and now we have two where possible and through the four colleges, we are looking at process reviews through our service design function and the two Heads of College Business Operations work as a team bringing the whole operation together.
Moving on, the FE and Skills team deal with our FE provision and also compliance for apprenticeships. We have our activity across Buxton Leek campus which means we have campuses in Buxton and also in Leek and they also support activity at Derby. We have our access to further education courses, we deal with apprenticeship endpoint assessment and apprenticeship support and contracting. We deal with the FE examinations, FE planning, student numbers, FE systems and management information systems and operations.
If we move on to the next slide please. I have a small team who support programme and curriculum management, looks at the curriculum management workflow and digitisation. We have The Registry Systems Team and I think we are quite fortunate at Derby because they are the people that can do a lot of work on our student system, Peoplesoft, and they are able to undertake the necessary tasks as we flow through the system, resolve issues and help us with the next piece which is process review and transformation; they have the hands-on ability to do that and also we are able, through the team strategic leadership of the student record system at a university level, to hook into our IT team and DS and S.
Okay, moving on to The Registry operations, I would describe The Registry operations as the engine, the boiler house of the University really because every student has to pass through this in one way or another. We are responsible for international student compliance, issuing CAS, making sure that they are on programme, informing UK Visa and Immigration of any issues, overstaying, etc. We have our Registry Support Team that supports myself and the wider team, Student Records and Awards who deal with graduation, conferment, verification of degrees, etc. also all the Student Loan Company finance elements, federal aid, all of the financial parts. We have the Timetabling and Attendance Unit which builds the timetable and support attendance and we have the Student Hub, I'll talk about the Student Hub on the next slide.
Next slide please. The Student Hub is a new innovation launched in January 2024. Previously to the Student Hub we had lots of different touch points for students, previously what was happening was students were coming into certain places and being bounced to other places and often the resolution of problems would take a long time or wouldn't happen at all and students would just give up which isn't supportive for our students; it's dissatisfying for them but it also doesn't help for our continuation so we launched the Student Hub in January 2024. It brings together all of our front-facing services in The Registry, including our Finance Team, so our Income Team sits right in the Student Hub supporting students at the point of contact. In creating the Student Hub we were able to close our separate college receptions and our student services reception, we also introduced an applicant facing team so our Admissions Inquiry Team can now take face- to- face advice which they weren't able to do before. We offer, through the Student Hub a five-stage approach to support students that are self-help, universal services, early help, targeted help and specialist support and the vision always was to stop our students getting lost in the system and being passed from team to team, to support and to help them at the point of contact so hopefully have them walk away with a resolution or if not a resolution, knowing that there is a resolution happening in the very near future. We now measure how we support students and we are really proud of our 85% first approach resolution figure which means a student walks into the Student Hub and gets everything they want answered at that point. We are getting brilliant feedback about the positive support we are now able to offer and we are preparing to move on to phase two which will see us looking at bringing the wider student support mechanisms into the Student Hub and also looking at other delivery models; for example online web chats, developing self-service, etc.
Next slide please. The next thing I want to talk to you about is Student Policy and Regulations and Melissa Hartle is going to come and talk to you in a minute about this. Basically, we cover academic appeals and offenses, our academic regulations and policies, our student complaints procedures and our student conduct procedures all sit in the Student Policy and Regulations Team and last, but not least, the final team I'll talk to you about today is our Student Services Team; they support students who have a need of disability services. They work with the Chaplaincy and provide counselling and mental health services, they are the liaison with the GP provider who sit on campus at Kedleston Road and also support student life. Also included are financial information, advice and guidance element, the student support and also the Head of Student Service is our University Safeguarding and Prevent Lead.
I think that might be my final slide; as you can see there is a wide encompassing area within The Registry and we deal with a lot but it's helpful that we are all sat in one place and we can provide those support services to our students. I’m happy to take any questions you may have?
Thank you Jo and sorry for the technical hitches earlier, thank you ever so much for coming and presenting today Jo. We will now pass on to Melissa Hartle for the next part of the presentation, thank you.
Hello, I'm Melissa Hartle and I am from the Student Policy and Regulations Team and, as Jo Cooke has outlined, we cover a wide range of areas; we have got academic appeals, academic misconduct, student complaints, student conduct, student regulations and policies. Today I'm here to talk to you about the academic regulations that relate to undergraduate and post-graduate assessment boards. Your role as an External Examiner includes: prior to an assessment board to have completed external moderation, those grades are then presented to an assessment board where they get formally ratified and the progression decisions are made on the student profiles at the board. Ensuring due process is followed alongside the consistency and parity of decisions that are being made.
The following slides are going to take you through some of the academic regulations that relate to both undergraduate and postgraduate.
Next slide please. We have regulations about how a student passes a module and gets their credit awarded; for undergraduate the cumulative mark for the module must be at least 40% to get credits for this. Where this isn't achieved, they do not get the credits and they would be offered referrals however there may be exceptions to this if a programme is accredited by a professional body that have different regulations. Any referrals or retakes of modules are also capped at 40% for undergraduate modules. For postgraduate, to pass a module and be awarded the credits a student must achieve at least 50% and that's in each assessment component. Again, referrals and retakes would be capped at 50% for postgraduate.
Next slide please. For undergraduate student progression, and this includes programmes that also have a foundation stage, a student requires 120 credits to pass to the next stage or a student can have 100 credits and be trailing one 20 credit module that they can then retake the following year. Alternatively, the student could have passed 80 credits and also have 20 credits compensated which makes a total of 100 credits and still be trailing a module. I'll talk about how compensation works on a further slide. If a student is doing a programme that does have a foundation stage, they must have passed the level two Maths and English modules before they can progress. If a student is taking those modules, they must also have completed all their level four and get 120 credits before they can progress into their final stage at level six in an academic year. If a student achieves less than 40 credits in their fulltime the decision of the board would be to fail and terminate that student, if there are exceptional circumstances that the student has raised that they feel has affected their ability to study they could access the request for additional consideration policy or they can submit an academic appeal and request for that decision to be changed. For any undergraduate programmes that do have professional bodies there may be some requirements where the student has to have 120 credits to progress to the next stage and there's no flexibility on the decision. The rules would all be included in the programme specifications. The professional body for postgraduate students who complete a stage may then progress to the next stage and also be carrying a referral in one of their modules. Any student profile that indicates a concern in terms of the credits achieved or the student’s engagement the student would be sent a warning letter from the assessment board and that would hopefully encourage the student to get in touch and talk to us about if there are any circumstances that are affecting their study.
Next slide please. So undergraduate awards, we have several awards that are available in our regulations, the main awards we have are the full honours degree, we also have the non-honours pass degree, the Foundation degrees and we could have HND and HNC programmes. To get an honours degree the student has to achieve 360 credits in their study; that's 120 credit credits at level four, level five and level six. We then have the classifications based on the average weighting of 20% of level five and 80% of level six and we have thresholds for where they can achieve their degree classification; if that average weighting comes out as 70% or above they would achieve a 1st, 60% or above is a 2:1 50% is 2:2 and 40% is a 3rd. We also have borderline ranges where a student, if they are within a certain borderline could gain a higher classification provided they have achieved at least 60 credits at level six. In that higher classification, for example, if the average comes out between 68% and 69.9% and they do have 60 credits at level six that are graded above 70% they would get a 1st instead of getting a 2:1 and we have got borderlines for each of the classifications. If the student is doing a top up degree and would only be studying 120 credits at level six their classification is calculated at 100% on level six and the same thresholds and borderlines would apply. For a non-honours pass degree the student has to have achieved 300 credits and at least 60 of those credits must be at level six; if the student accepts the non-honours pass degree they cannot return to the same programme in the future. For foundation degrees in HND we do have a minimum 120 credits at level four and level five and we also have the same classifications in terms of merit and distinction.
For postgraduate awards we have the full Masters, the postgraduate diploma and postgraduate certificate. For the full Masters the student has to have achieved at least 180 credits at level seven, again we have got ranges of where the student can get their award: an average of 50% to 59.99% is a pass, 60% to 69.99% is a merit, 70% and above is a distinction.
Again, we have borderlines very similar to the undergraduate where a student could achieve the higher classification but for postgraduate they need to have scored in the high classification for their independent study, for this to apply for a postgraduate diploma the student needs to have 120 credits at level seven and for postgraduate certificate they need 60 credits at level seven.
Next slide please. We do also have some programmes that have an integrated Masters; this is where the student studies level seven and also study some of level six and it's all integrated together into the post-graduate award. The integrated Masters will only be calculated on the level seven modules that the student achieved, where a student fails to get the integrated Masters classification they would then get an honours classification instead and that would be calculated in the normal way.
Next slide please. The assessment board does have the discretion to make some decisions on a student's profile which are not automatically given in our regulations, related to compelling circumstances, etc, for example we have compensation, which I mentioned earlier, where if a student achieves a communitive grade of 35% to 39% in a module that can be compensated and they could be given credits for that module. The average grade of the students profile must be at least 40% for that to apply. Also, you can only compensate one module at each level so overall there's only a maximum of 60 compensated credits that could count towards a degree. This decision can be made at the assessment board as long as the eligibility is there. The student can be given a compensation also at an assessment board for a third and final attempt to retake a module; students normally would enroll on a module one time, if they then failed those referrals and that module is a fail they can enroll a second time, if they then fail those referrals in that module again and if there are compelling circumstances the board can approve that they can retake that module for a third and final time; this must be discussed and confirmed at the assessment board. The post-graduate study of an independent study student could be given a second attempt so they could take that module for a second time, again there would need to be compelling circumstances and that would have to be discussed and agreed at the assessment board. If it is agreed, the student would have to undertake a new piece of work and it would be capped at 50%.
For authorised breaks of study a student can take an authorised break of study for up to one year, if they need to extend that by a further year the assessment board is empowered to approve an extension if there is support from the teaching team and there are compelling circumstances. In terms of registration period, an assessment board is also empowered, if there are compelling circumstances, to extend that registration period by up to one year. Currently our academic regulations are under review and going through the governance structure for changes to be implemented for 2025/2026. When that happens there will be communications and updates circulated about what the changes are. If you have any queries about academic regulations you can contact us on our email address academicregs@derby.ac.uk, the entire team accesses this inbox and can help you, we also have the academic regulations information available on our web pages. Does anybody have any questions? Thanks Melissa, that was brilliant. We do have a message in the chat - so I thought I'd ask you that one now - do compensated passes apply to health courses as they don't at other institutes? Yes, compensation might not be eligible if the programme has a professional body accreditation that says it is not allowed and that's been an approved derogation from the usual programme regulations, that would need to be considered if that's a derogation. Another question in the chat - are External Examiners asked for independent opinion on borderline cases at assessment boards or are these all decided in advance? For the borderline degree classifications our Peoplesoft system should automatically calculate where they are eligible for that borderline but it would be highlighted at the assessment board and agreed. We are happy that that calculation is correct and they can be given that higher classification but the system should work it out and it should be on the student profile so it can be ratified. I hope that answered your question?
Thanks Melissa for joining us, its appreciated. I’m now going to pass on to Richard Monk again to talk about Academic Partners, thank you Richard.
Thanks to Laura, thanks to Melissa for that as well. So, I’m just presenting on this for a colleague, who unfortunately cannot be with us today, was just to give an overview of Academic Partnerships and the External Examiners supporting our Academic Partnerships, and standards maintaining Partnerships. So, just to start again actually, so this was just to present on the role of External Examiners where we work in partnership with other institutions to deliver our programmes, either through so yes we have Partnerships with a range of different institutions in the UK and overseas, through a variety of franchise or validation arrangements, and some of you as External Examiners will have been appointed to oversee modules delivered perhaps both at the University of Derby and also with one or more of our partners in the UK, or overseas. So, this is just to cover and give an overview of some of the responsibilities that you'll have as External Examiners in that context. So, we'll look at the appointment criteria that we apply. the slight differences in the role the importance of comparability of Standards. where programmes are being delivered in more than one location, language of delivery and what applies there. Just an opportunity to answer, ask any questions at the end. Let us just move on to the next slide.
So, in terms of appointment criteria one of the things we try to ensure when we appoint External Examiners to oversee delivery of modules and assessment of modules with Partners, is that you'd have some experience of working with, part working in Partnership Arrangements already. So, you understand some of the challenges and some of the risks associated with delivering programmes and modules, at other locations, and the importance of maintaining standards. So, in terms of the purpose of the role, as we've talked about earlier, fundamentally it's about ensuring that the standards of our, of the awards we make as the awarding body, even where we don't directly deliver the programme, are credible and secure. So academic standards are maintained wherever our programmes and modules are delivered, and whoever they're delivered by, whether it's by our own staff or staff in partner institutions. So that I mean that's a fundamental responsibility of any university as an awarding body. Ultimate responsibility lies with us as the awarding body for the standards of our awards wherever they are delivered. And just a key ask, and apologies this is repeated on every slide but it's absolutely critical as External Examiners that where you are responsible partnership arrangements, either individually or as alongside a programme delivered at the University of Derby, you clearly reference the partner delivery in your annual report, so that we can easily pick out any particular good practice, or any particular issues, that might have occurred at a particular partner in a given year. It's really important. We just move on to the next slide.
So, in terms of Comparability of Standards. This is particularly important where programmes and modules are delivered at multiple locations. It's important that we have an understanding and an awareness of differences in student performance, across different points of delivery, and particularly if you're an External and you're looking at a module that's delivered in multiple locations, and you're looking at samples of student work from each of those locations, you're forming a view of how well students have performed and how, and whether there are any differences in performance levels between students at different locations and why that might be. Also, from an assessment verification point of view it's just ensuring that the assessments are valid and reliable and effective. Sometimes for certain assessments they'll be contextualised for the local delivery, sometimes occurs when an assessment needs to be contextualised to perhaps an overseas location, where it needs to be made appropriate for that particular delivery and it's just forming a view as to whether that contextualisation is such that the assessment remains appropriate, and hasn't been changed to an extent where it ceases to be appropriate. So, that's an important element of assessment verification with when working with Partners. So, we just move on to the next one?
So again, moving on from assessment verification the next part of the quality assurance process is moderation. As we've talked about earlier and again it's looking at the performance of students across different delivery locations for individual modules, and ensuring that the standards achieved by students are comparable with what students have achieved at the University of Derby, but also on modules that you're familiar with from your own institutions, or elsewhere, where you've been an External Examiner. So, it's about ensuring that the assessment criteria have been applied appropriately in each of those different locations, by different sets of markers; marking standards are similar across different marking teams, in different locations; and where you see any differences or issues or concerns that you flag those up before the exam board, and in your reports, that we have a record of any particular challenges or issues that have occurred during that process. It's also looking at comparability of feedback given to students by different marking teams, and whether there are any lessons that can be learned there or improvements made, in specific locations or through specific Partners. So, that's equally important. Just move on to the next slide please?
In terms of another aspect of comparability of delivery is the opportunity to visit academic Partners as an External Examiner to get an understanding of how the partner operates; what its context is; and how and how the teams there are operating and running the course and assessing students. So, in terms of your role as Externals, if you're, if you've been appointed to manage. Sorry, if you've been appointed to oversee modules and programmes delivered as franchise provision, so where it's the University of Derby programme delivered elsewhere, the expectation is that you'd visit once during your normal term of office. Whereas for validated provision the expectation where it's the partners curriculum that we're validating, the expectation is that you would visit normally once a year. It's an opportunity to meet students, meet staff, look at the resources at the institution, and get a fuller view of the Partner and how it's operating.
So lastly, we do have a couple of partners that teach and assess in a language other than English, which obviously provides an additional challenge in terms of the External Examiner role. What we normally try to do in those, for those Partners, is wherever possible to appoint bilingual External Examiners. Occasionally that isn't possible and where that is the case, we would ensure us working with a Partner, would ensure that all of the relevant work that you need to see is translated, and any policy documents or anything else that you need for your duties, is translated, to enable you to carry out the your duties effectively. And again, that would be an opportunity, if there were any concerns about how that is done and your access to the right information, here'll be an opportunity to comment on that within your annual report, particularly if there are any concerns around how that's working in practice.
So, I think that's probably the last slide I had on Partners. Very happy to answer any questions if anyone has any?
Thank you, Richard. Again, there's a couple in the chat, so I don't know if you want me to go through them one from Gaurav for overseas Partners. Is internal moderation done by the local teams at the location, or by colleagues at University of Derby?
So, although we encourage Partners to carry out their own internal moderation locally, that's not part of our standard process, so internal moderation would be carried out by staff at University of Derby staff, but some Partners have an additional layer of moderation locally, which we suggest is best practice, but the responsibility still lies solely with the University for internal moderation.
Thank you, Richard. There's also a question from Clare and apologies Clare I'm not quite sure which part of the slides that was applicable to, so I don't know if you can come off mute and ask your question? It's to do with whether something applies to online courses.
Sorry, about visiting sites, if you, if you are an External Examiner for largely an online course.
That would only be the case Clare for, and we have it only very limited number actually. There's only really one programme in the University that runs an online Franchise at the moment, and that's MSc Strategic Management, which runs with a Partner in Botswana. Other online programmes? There wouldn't be any of those requirements. No.
Okay thank you.
Thank you, Ian and thank you Richard. So, we're going to pass on to Adam Highley, our Apprentice and Employer Experience Manager. So, thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody. Hope you're having a lovely morning and taking away some useful information, like Laura’s just mentioned. I'm just going to give a bit of an overview on the apprenticeship provision at the University of Derby, an endpoint assessment, and how that would fit into your role as an External Examiner.
So, I've just put a little agenda together, although it's a quick 10 minutes and towards the latter end of the morning, but we'll look over the provision, sort of the components that we have in terms of apprenticeship. It's useful to understand that when you, you're undertaking EE roles and responsibilities; how that will link into endpoint assessment, as I mentioned roles and responsibilities as an External Examiner; and highlighting some differences between apprenticeships and undergrad and postgrad routes. A little touch point on the E-portfolio system, again akin to what other people have mentioned this morning in terms of different platforms that will be used; and how your data and reporting is actually utilised, so it's not just a you know the fruitless meaningless task that that's been undertaken, actually we do utilise that. So, the slides will be quite text heavy. I'm not going to read off them but it's there for your reference afterwards, but you know the University we do have a strong and thriving apprenticeship provision and it's something that the University is building on a yearly basis. We have approximately 2,000 apprentices across 3,000 employers across all four colleges within the provision, and as our colleagues have mentioned before some of the provision stretches through to Buxton and Leek College as well. That's where our range and level of, oh sorry, just pop back one for me. One more. Ta. Thank you. That's where our range and level, levels two through to seven come in, so we've got a clear pathway of apprentices that join us at level two and three, and we can provide that all the way through to, you know, five, six, and seven. And that's where, you know, the experience and your role will come into play, ensuring that we're standardising that delivery, and creating that parity across all our provision. Like I say, we've an extremely successful provision but more so within long-standing relationships within Health, the College of Health, and Engineering.
So the apprenticeship components for those of you that might be aware of it I apologise, but if it is new to you there are sort of, you know, six to seven, you know, really key components that that make up an apprenticeship and we are regulated by the ESFA, or the Education Skills Funding Agency. So we, we have to justify where that government money is spent as per, you know, the OfS as well, but any apprenticeship, whether it's University of Derby, or if you have touch points with other HEIs or other providers it will have the criteria, the knowledge skills, and behaviours built into them, and that's our predetermined content. We'll have off the job learning, so there is an expectation that the apprentice and the student undertake additional research opportunities, additional learning away from their normal working role. So, it's very much akin to a part-time degree, but there's also a wider layer of functional skills, which is a government’s initiatives to upscale English and Maths across anyone within education.
The last three little bullet points you might find within the portfolios and when you're coming across examinations and, and sort of sampling you'll see progress reviews, that is part and parcel of the ESFA's guidelines, so once every three months or every quarter of a year we will meet with the apprentice, and their employer, just to touch base; see how they're performing; how they're embedding their role; and the impact that we are having as a provider back into the apprentice and the employer. When they've finished their taught learning, this is sort of be where you'll start to see a bit more information. You come through Gateway and End Point Assessment and that it will, it will differ depending on the standard and apprenticeship that has been chosen.
So, End Point Assessment there are two main types of EPA within the University apprenticeship provision. We have integrated: whereby it's built into the delivery and the grading of assessments throughout the normal programmes, whether that's three, four, five-year study. It's built into to the assessments and assignments in there. But we also have Independent EPA as well, whereby it will be an external organisation that will come in and and independently assess the apprentice against the standards of the apprenticeship that they've registered and been learning against. Prior to that they'll hit a period called Gateway, and it signals the end of the taught delivery, and we will check through with the employer and the apprentice to ensure that they've met all the criteria; they've met their off the job hours they have achieved their functional skills; and actually they're ready to go and be you know formally assessed at that apprenticeship standard.
So, an integrated EPA, as I mentioned, it's where the degree qualification is included in the apprenticeship and that assessment relating to the degrees it's fully integrated as per sort of the definition of the word. Some circumstances that the provider delivering the degree will also act as the End Point Assessment organisation. So, the University of Derby will actually be the awarding body, so to speak, for the EPA and that's where your EE role, you know, really for formalises itself and and we lean on that quite heavily. Let's say it, it ties in that role of the employer within the assessment, to sign off competency, ready to go through to, to End Point Assessment.
Independent EPA, as I've mentioned, it's that external End Point Assessment organisation, we're still required to provide the evidence of that quality monitoring process is that standardised approach, and again that's where your reports will tie in, and the activities that you do. Again, we just pass that on to, to an external body rather than it being used internally.
Again, your role so you know trying to provide a little bit of clarity and light upon your role within apprenticeships. I've sort of tried to summarise it in some of the bullet points you can see on screen, but like I said your role will depend on the EPA plan of, of that degree and, and the apprenticeship that, that you're assigned to, but as mentioned before you know those campus visits, you know, which can include: online observing those live assessments; submitting your annual reports; moderating a sampling, you know, sampled cohort of, of End Point Assessment work, it allows us to, to ensure that consistency and fairness and, and reflects on our grading criteria and actually does that line up with the degree and the apprenticeship as well? It also allows us to review assessment materials, you know, are they actually appropriate and and relevant for, you know, for the, for the standard and the degree, but in comparison to other HEIs as well and that network and experience that you bring to the role. Again, you might be asked to attend and observe Gateway meetings, just to to provide a bit of feedback in certain cases, if they sat on the border, you know, ready to go through and be formally assessed; and again attend, you know, initial assessment induction standardisation sessions, to ensure consistency in our assessment practices. And we, we'll link up with the department, the quality team within the University, to ensure that, that communication is pulled through, and again any reasonable adjustments through to End Point Assessment, we'll link in with you, that you may have seen through your External Examiner role.
Some of the differences? So, it's a little bit of a catch 22 on this to be honest, but the there are no differences from an apprentice to a, in air quotes, a traditional student. The University is working really hard to ensure that experience and that pathway is identical, whether, you know, you are a degree student or an apprentice with us. So, you'll notice that students are taught in some of the same classes, so there might be mixed delivery. They will follow the same high-level plan and what will have happened is the degree will have been mapped into the apprenticeship standard, so that it will look for that similarity and go we can, we can joint teach on there. They will all be assessed in the same way, other than the End Point Assessment. If it's, if it's independent, and they'll all have the same access to the same you know resources, Blackboard and all the same entries that, that a traditional student is allowed. The only difference that you might see is that you may come across any portfolio, so if you're aligned to the College of Health you will come across, maybe, something called PebblePad and for any other the colleges, it will be a platform called Smart Assessor. And they will capture those progress reviews, assessments and feedback that, that students are receiving. As I mentioned you PebblePad and Smart Assessor the main purpose of those E portfolios is to collect that evidence and, and to monitor that progress that the apprentice is making right from the first day in learning all the way up to their End Point Assessment. It will capture that log of off the job hours created; it will capture the log of progress reviews and, and again that progress that's being made. As I mentioned before, it might mean that you'll need to access one of those systems to maybe look at some assessments to, you know, verify the off the job is been enhanced and achieved, but again our EPA team, I know there's maybe a couple on the call, and myself, we've got that, that guidance available for you and we will provide that, that support and the relevant information when the time comes. We do also have a, a dedicated relationship coordinator, again that looks, or looks after and, and supports specific and particular apprenticeships that are on hand to support in those times as well.
Lastly, again just as part of your reports, you know, it's not a meaningless task in terms of our apprenticeship provision we do require some of the specific comments about apprentice's achievements, their progression and the quality of their learn on programme. Although we intending on having a very similar experience, we know there are certain nuances in there, and having your opinion and experience, and comments in there does allow us to, to continually improve our provision. So, do please look out for these questions within your annual reports, especially if there are mixed delivery and they will be outlined to you prior, you know, we take those responses and we build them into our standardisation practices, within the apprenticeship hub.
Again, your impact, it's not seen within your immediate work but actually supporting assessments, but it's that lasting impact that, that, that can support the University's provision, you know. We are subject to audit, audits and inspections by the ESFA, Ofsted, and the OfS, and all the contributions that you make align and allow us to, to produce, you know, that meaningful work and actually the detail and information required at audit and inspection.
Thank you. If there's any questions? Or I'm bang on time! Look at that I think that's the first time ever.
That was a good hand over there Adam, so thank you.
We just stay on that slide a moment so good morning, everybody it's still just about morning, isn't it? I'll try not to take too long because it's been a a really long morning for you, hasn't it? I'm sure. So within my area we have the Online Hub which looks after all of our online students across the University there's three teams within that Hub so one looks after enrolment the other is the Online Learning Advisor team, which helps students around their time with us and then there's the Programme Services team, that's probably the team that you as externals will have most engagement with because they help us to set up and run our online assessment boards.
We can move on. Online Learning at the University of Derby is really well established. We've been delivering online for 25 years now we are the fourth largest deliverer of online learning in the in the UK what's particularly distinctive about our provision is the large volume of undergraduate provision which you can see there runs across full degrees top-up degrees and for on from what Adam was talking about we also use online a lot for our apprenticeship model because it's really flexible in terms of meeting the needs of employers and their employees we have a lot provision at postgraduate level and in the past couple of years we've moved to online being the primary mode of delivery for our professional doctorates and then a number of our online modules particularly in the health area are also validated as Standalone professional qualification as well as part of the our offer of CPD into employers we can move on to the next slide our online academic framework or has just been refreshed and approved this year by our academic board in the university and this sets out the principles that underpin the design of all of our online provision at all levels we make sure that what we're doing designing something which is bespoke to online Learners so online as a term was used quite a lot during covid to describe the learning experience that we had to give to students that I think was remote delivery rather than online in the way in which we understand it so this is intentionally designed around students who we know are never going to come onto campus it's a global community so we build it around the needs of that Global Community but also make sure that students feel that they're benefiting from being part of that Global interchange as well we have made sure that there's lots of groups and channels for online learners into the all the services of the University so that're not at a deficit in any way our whole approach to developing online learning is on by a lot of collaborative pedagogic research between our academics who are leading online but also our team of learning designers within the University as well so all of this gives us a bespoke a journey through for our students and is very much designed in collaboration with employers and professional bodies as well because a lot of our Learners are again trying to gain qualifications whilst working most of them are part-time in terms of their study model and move on Neil Fowler earlier on talked about our move to Blackboard Ultra and that has given us an opportunity to refresh some of our approaches and we have are at the moment just finalising a new set of online learning baselines which will be used by academics and learning designers as part of their collaborative working to make sure that we're putting together a consistent learner experience across the university for all of our Online Learners I won't go through the list that's on there but hopefully when you're seeing student work and when you're seeing assessments and so on you'll get a sense of the way in which these principles and these baselines are shaping the student experience we can move on online academic calendar is we would we have a 51 we year so there's only Christmas week, when there's not something happening in the online world the year is divided into three trimesters and you've got the Ates there for the next three or four years so students standard could study one module at a time or if they're accelerated they would study two per Tri trimester the trimester model also allows for some programmes to have entry in January and may as well as standard entry in September we just move on to the next slide you can say a little bit more about what that looks like in terms of the standard delivery model, so standard model is weeks 1 to 10 is teaching we have Set points in the year when students would hand in any assignment so that would be week six and week 11 in a trimester then we have a marking period a marks release period we have our pre-board which is also when the external moderation would be taking place and then we have main assessment boards three times a year as well if we just move on to the next slide just a slightly different year for apprenticeship programmes to make sure that we allow sufficient time for the off the job learning and are compliant with the ESFA regulations as Adam was talking about earlier on so that does mean that the assessment boards for online apprenticeship programmes happen a little bit later than the ones for our standard provision we can move on I think and in terms of assessment board so as I say we have one per trimester for each college because we do have online provision in all four of the University colleges we also have one board per trimester for all of our online apprenticeship programmes as well so that that will come from across the different colleges of the university all of those boards are combined module and progression and award boards because we've got students who are progressing and grad graduating at the three different points in the year so in those boards you'll see a mix of us analysing the performance data on the modules that are being looked at but also then making progression and award decisions as well and the critical thing to bear in mind is that our online provision operates totally in alignment with the same academic regulations as our campus programmes many of the online programmes also exist in a campus mode so part of your responsibilities and external but also moderating and making sure that the online learner experience is equivalent to that of our students on campus and I think that's my slides done.
Thank you Ian, that was brilliant, thank you ever so much thank you thanks very much okay everyone we've reached the end of the event today I hope you've enjoyed it and found it informative I'm sure everyone's taking a deep breath now and ready to get up out of their seat but thank you ever so much for joining us today. I'm hoping that we've picked up most questions throughout the chat and unless there's any others which I'll give you a moment to ask them in a minute then we'll let you go and enjoy the rest of your day.
External Examiners Induction Event October 2024 video
Back to About the External Examiner Role