External Examiners 2014

External Examiners Reporting System (EERS)  - FAQ

The External Examiner Project is a phased project. Through preview sessions, User acceptance testing and various other contact with user group the following questions have been raised and answered below:

 

Answer: There is one and only one person defined as the UG contact for a School, and one and only one person defined as the PG contact for a School.  There is nothing stopping the same person acting as both the UG and PG contact for a School.  There is only ever one and only one key contact per report, which will be the appropriate School contact depending on whether the report is a UG or PG report.

 

Answer: The School Key Contact has a School Reports tab available on their dashboard, clicking on this tab will present a list of all reports for the school together with the status of each report and where an examiner has submitted or an academic response coordinator has responded to a report, there will be options presented to view the report and the response.  

 

My understanding is that Colleges will contact EEs outside the system once a report is late. Do you expect there will be a way to generate a list of EEs with late reports plus their email addresses? Via Explorer or via EERS?

Answer: The EERS will list reports which are late, and within each report you can access the EE email details. This is the constraint: user has to get into each report to get the EE email. So the best would be to use BI SUITE to track this.

 

Answer: The College Key Contact has a College Reports tab available on their dashboard, clicking on this tab will present a list of all reports for the college together with the status of each report and where an examiner has submitted or an academic response coordinator has responded to a report, there will be options presented to view the report and the response.  

 

Who allocates Readers and Academic Response Coordinators to External Examiner Reports?

Answer: Key School contacts

 

Answer: When you allocate a report you need to add readers from your School Distribution List, there are 2 steps to follow:-

Firstly, you must set up up your School Distribution List with the details of all possible readers you may ever want to select from to allocate to a particular report.

Secondly, for each report you are allocating you must select the appropriate readers for the report from the readers available in your School Distribution List.

 

Answer: The Key Contact may change the Readers allocated to a report up to the point of the External Examiner submitting the report. It’s the report submission that triggers the email to all the Readers. If, after submission, the Key Contact identifies a further Reader the Key Contact can copy the report link and email this directly to the specific Reader.

 

Answer: The Key Contact may change the Academic Response Coordinator of a report up to the point of the response submission. Following response submission the report is removed from the allocation list.

 

Answer: The two reports relate to the academic year of the external examiner report -  one is for 13/14 which we want to receive now and one for 14/15 which we want to receive next year. Allocate the 13/14 External Examiner first.  Only allocate the 14/15 External Examiner Report after you have received the 13/14 External Examiner Report.

 

Answer: Speak to or email your External Examiner around the time of their Board of Examiner meeting and remind them that they should return the External Examiner Report for 2013/14.  You might wish to remind them twice!  How will they identify which report to return?  Click on the link in the notification email and check the top of the report as it states which year the External Examiner Report covers.

 

Answer: No they do not need to be. 

 

My External Examiner has been notified that they have a report ready to draft but they cannot access the system.  What might the issue be?

Answer: One of the issues maybe that the External Examiner may not have registered themselves on EASE. Please contact Student Systems support via studentsystems@ed.ac.uk

 

Answer: They can log into EASE using their current login details and EERS will identify their user name and give them access to their report. When the current visit ends, their login details will transfer to their new visit and there will be no need for them to re-register with EASE.

 

Why must I only use the role title of individuals when responding to the external examiner report? As the External Examiner Reporting System is open to all staff with EUCLID access, Academic Response Coordinators asked not to identify students or staff by name in their reports.  Instead Academic Response Coordinators should refer to a person by their role.  External Examiners have also been asked to observe this request which is contained in the External Examiner Handbook.

 

Answer: The clicking of radio is a tag created so that reports can be drawn off for analytical purposes for aggregated data.  It makes it easier for Schools, Colleges and Institutional level to take stock of comments and whether action needs to be taken. If, however, you think the matter needs urgent input from the College or Academic Services before the external examiner can be responded to, than please feel free to do this by emailing your relevant contact. 

 

Answer: It may be best to tick the school as you will be able to comment on your school's approach to the matter. 

 

For more information on the External Examiner project click on the Wiki link below:

Key dates

Training

Online Tutorials

Work is underway to produce a suite of online tutorials for each role within the EERS software.

Materials

A presentation was held to introduce staff within the pilot schools to the policy behind EERS and provide a preview demonstration of the new software. The slides can be downloaded below:

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