Sampling

Spent most of today on administrative tidying: getting samples of work ready to be seen by the external examiners for the various programmes I am 'module leader' on:

• BSc Hons Health & Lifestyle Management: Second year and third year psych modules
• BSc Hons Psychology: a third year module on applied health psychology 
• MSc Health Psychology: a module on long term conditions 

External examiners are senior academics from outside institutions who look at a sample of our students' work - in the context of a lot of other information - and check our academic standards.

For every module this requires the designated leader to put together a pack of information which typically includes:

• Copy of the module guide and all guidance given to student on the assessment they're required to do
• Copy of an overall marks list showing individual students' marks for each component (piece of coursework, exam, etc.), plus summary statistics for the whole group.
• Copies of marked coursework with evidence that marks have been internally moderated (checked) by another academic
• Copies of exam papers - with markers' guidelines
• Copies of marked exam scripts with evidence that marks have been internally moderated (checked) by another academic

Some external examiners also request summary statistics broken down per exam question (to see if some questions seemed 'harder' than others).

We also have to produce a form that shows an assessment 'audit trail' - evidence that we got all our assessment tasks and instructions checked and signed off by another academic within the department - before we used them. This process does happen but keeping a record can sometimes be forgotten...

All of the documentation required is kept on file until near the examination boards  - which are in the next couple of weeks - but it's still rather time consuming to collate it together into a digestible form. Not the most interesting of tasks but it still gives a sense of closure on the filing front.

Meanwhile of course teaching and assessment continues apace on postgraduate courses and preparations have to be made for students who'll be doing resits over the summer period.