Exam board meetings

It's that time of year! Teaching is done, marking should be done, even academic integrity cases should be dealt with by now. It is time to reflect on how it has all gone.

What we tend to do is first have an internal meeting in which we go through all modules, and check their metrics. Did any of them have worryingly low grades or high grades? Is there a reason for that? Do any grades need adjusting? How have the students done? Are there unusually many or few who are getting a first class degree? How many requests of special circumstances were there, and how were they dealt with? (You can apply for special circumstances if, for instance, you are ill, you have a family bereavement, or similar things that might affect your performance, or your ability to even engage in academic work.) How many cases of academic integrity problems did we deal with, and how were they dealt with? And we nominate students for prizes.

When that's done, we have the big meeting with the external examiners. These have the ungrateful task of going through everything we do. All the modules, all module websites, all the assessments, the marking, the feedback: everything. And then they have to tell us what they think could and should be done better.

I always have something to do in these meetings as I am the academic integrity officer. And as well; the dissertation module always gets name-checked. We have three different external examiners for the three different directions we teach in, but they all, of course, look at the dissertation module, as that is done by everyone. And it is a tricky one as you are dealing with literally the entire academic staff. So that means a lot of herding cats! And some of them are not notoriously difficult to herd. So there is always an issue with consistency. And it is the most independent work the students do, and there are always students who really struggle with that.

The examiners tend to come with very useful advice. They have an outside view. Sometimes you are standing so close to the subject of your own module that you can't see anymore how else it could be, but they can. They were from three different universities (Liverpool, Southampton and Newcastle) so they all do things differently there. And we might as well steal their good ideas! Just as they steal ours I'm sure.

We have done the exam board meetings for the finalists, so the 3rd year BSc students and the 4th year students on the integrated masters. (There are also MSc students who do a project over summer and graduate in winter.) We'll have another exam board meeting for the non-finalists the week after.

When that's done we basically have the summer to implement all the changes that arose from these meetings. And then the whole circus starts again in September!