External not able to attend exam board?

[iveburntthetoast]

I’m an external examiner for a small-ish UG programme. I’ve been very ill recently and I’m not sure whether I’m going to manage the journey for the exam board next month.

They have a system whereby you look through all the exam scripts on the day before the board (ie they don’t post scripts to people). I only moderate work—no changes to individual grades can be made. Everything else is accessible via Turnitin.

What are the consequences of not being able to attend an exam board or look at exam scripts?

I am not sure of the consequences, but could you ask them to make an exception and send you the scripts beforehand (via recorded delivery etc) and attend the board via Skype, if you are well enough? We've had externals do this and it works well.

Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure what to do as I may be OK—it’s not for another 5 weeks. (They would have about 250 exam scripts to send me, unless they selected some for me.)

I hadn’t thought about Skype, although that would still stop me signing off the final award of degrees.

It’s an 11 hour train journey with 3 connections & is hard going at the best of times.

From memory, our external signed off the award via fax - probably the only time i the last ten years that our fax machine has been used ! The externals also only see a sample of the scripts - but not knowing the size of the programme you are EE for, 250 scripts might be that sample.

We use sharepoint for the scripts and upload during the year, to give the externals time. We did have one skype into the meeting once as his trains were fucked so he went back home and got on the laptop, worked fine. We emailed the sign off sheets, he signed, scanned and sent the back.

Goodness, don’t travel that far if you don’t feel up to it! Let them work with you to find a solution. Giving them notice now will be helpful. Wish you better BTW.

I have externalled (is that a word?) via telephone in the past. Then the documents that needed signing were posted to me and I posted them back.
We seem to frequently have missing externals at our exam boards but since we have boards that cover whole programmes of courses the other externals step in for signing etc.

I've Skyped in to Exam Boards. Or sent written comments re moderation & general comments on the conduct of the programme.