EXTERNAL EXAMINERS GUIDELINES AND NOMINATION PROCEDURES

EXTERNAL EXAMINING FOR TAUGHT PROGRAMMES:

CODE OF PRACTICE

• For new appointees, it shall be the responsibility of the department to solicit for external examiners from identified reputable universities in the region with a strong bias in the discipline in question. The Head of Department at shall contact the relevant heads of department at the selected universities for CVs of possible candidates in their departments.
• After careful scrutiny and assessment of the CVs at the departmental level by a team of specialists in the field, the head of department shall inform his or her counterpart(s) of the choice of candidate(s) whom the Faculty Board and the Quality Assurance Committee will approve. The nominee will fill and sign the EXTERNAL EXAMINER NOMINATION FORM. After the departm ent determined the number of external examiners required, the head of department shall proceed to invite them for assessment of examinations.
• This exercise shall be accomplished four months ahead of the examination period to allow enough time for the completion of the appointment process. Faculty Deans and Heads of Departments shall be fully responsible for ensuring deadlines are respected and unnecessary rush or delays are avoided.
• The process of approval of appointments shall include consideration of appropriate documentation in support of nominations to determine appropriate levels of academic and/or professional expertise and experience in relation to the relevant subject area and assessment.
• External examiners shallbe part of the Faculty Board of Examiners, which assesses students for an award or recommends the conferment of an award upon a student.
• Appointment dates for external examiners shall take account of the timing of assessments in such a way that the external examiners may be fully involved in the assessment process.
• New examiners should take up their appointments on or before the retirement of their predecessors. External examiners shall remain available until the last assessment with which they are to be associated in order to deal with any subsequent reviews of decisions.
• The Institute must keep a central register of external examiners’ appointments and periods of tenure in the Examinations Office to facilitate efficient monitoring of the system.

Criteria for the Selection of External Examiners

• Must be of a rank of a Senior Lecturer or above and from a well-recognized university, preference will be given to candidates with a professorial rank.
• Must have at least 3 years experience as an external examiner and at least 5 years in setting and marking examinations at university level. There maybe a possibility of mixing experienced and the less experienced.
• Must be published in the field of study he/she is assessing.
• For those supervising post-graduate students, they must have taught at postgraduate level.

3. Duration of Appointment

• The appointment of an external examiner may be terminated before the expiry of his/her normal term of office by approval of the KIST Quality Assurance Committee. Such a termination of appointment will normally be considered only on the basis of the external examiner’s unwillingness or inability to fulfil his/her responsibilities laid down by the department.

5. External Examiners’ Workload

5.1 Each programme shall be allowed a maximum of two external examiners. Where possible, one of the examiners shoul d be French speaking, and one should be English speaking. The period of assessment will not exceed 7 days.

6. Contractual Guidelines

• Module/Programme specification documents
• A copy of External Examiners annual report form
• Annual Programme Review report,
• Reports of outgoing and continuing external examiners.
• A copy of the guidelines on assessment
• Information on policies and strategies of academic quality.
• The name and email address of the contact person in the department
• Examination papers with model solutions
• Detailed syllabus
• Marking scheme
• Marked examination scripts showing clearly the marks awarded for each question as per the marking scheme.
• Any other relevant material
• The Institute, through the Quality assurance Directorate, shall advise the external examiner of any changes to the examination regulations that could directly affect students currently on the course. The Head of Department shall als o advise the external examiner of any changes to the course, which affect its assessment methods and/or regulations.
• The Institute, through the Directorate of Quality Assurance, shall provide in writing guidance on the content of reports to external examiners (see External Examiners Annual Report Form). Heads of department should remind external examiners of the Institute’s guidance whenever a report is due.
• The Institute shall meet its financial obligations to the external examiner. The amount of the fee payable to each category of external examiners (those from outside Rwanda, those from within, and those for part-time programmes) shall be at the discretion of the Institute.

• The syllabus for the course being assessed has been covered by the examination questions.
• The examinations set are up to the standard required. The examiner must be able to judge the standard of the award impartially on the basis of work submitted for assessment, without being influenced by previous association wi th the course, staff, or any of the students.
• The time allocated to the examination paper is adequate and within the required examination standards.
• The model solutions and marking scheme provided are correct and in order.
• The content and form of all Continuous Assessment Tests (CAT), including type of questions set, nature of internal assessment, and students’ overall performance, are critically analysed and reviewed.
• He/she is able to compare the academic standards of the Institute with those of courses leading to comparable awards elsewhere.
• He/she is a member of, and attends appropriate Examiners Board meetings at which decisions on recommendations for awards are made to ensure fairness and consistency in the decision-making process .The role of the external examiner at meetings of the Board of Examiners is particularly important in the event of disagreement on the mark to be awarded for a particular piece of assessment, or on the classification to be derived from the array of marks of a particular candidate. Meetings also provide a valuable opportunity for external examiners to offer comments and advice on any aspect of the assessment process.
• He/she brings to the notice of the Rector or Vice-Rector (Academic) any matters of serious concern arising from the assessments which put at risk the standard of the Institute’s awards.
• He/she shall submit to the Vice rector Academic, on an annual basis, a comprehensive report on the conduct of the assessments just concluded, including commentary and judgments on the validity, reliability, and integrity of the assessment process and the standards of student achievement/performance.
• On the part of the department

• Departments should ensure that they are not overloading external examiners, but also take into account the need for effective moderation by external examiners when planning assessment schemes and schedules.
• Departments are responsible for ensuring that all written or recorded work contributing to the final award is available for external examination or comment. Where such work has been returned to students, students are responsible for retaining it in a portfolio for possible future external scrutiny, and departments are responsible for alerting students to this requirement.

• It must be emphasized that the Institute attaches a great deal of importance to the external examiners report which is expected to address more specifically the following, among others:
• Approval of draft examination papers, the standard of the examination questions, course outlines, syllabuses.
• Assessment of examination scripts. External examiners have the right to see all examination scripts. Where a selection of scripts is scrutinized, the principles for selection should be agreed in advance. These principles should ensure that external examiners see a sample of scripts from the top, middle, and bottom of the range and have enough evidence to determine that internal marking and classification are of an appropriate standard and are consistent. External examiners should normally be asked to scrutinize the scripts of borderline candidates, those of candidates assessed internally as first class or as failures and those candidates for whom special circumstances exist.
• Scrutiny of other assessed work (CATs, projects, industrial/community attachments): All written or recorded work contributing to the final award should be available for external examination or comment. External examiners should also have access to evidence relating to other work, which contributes to the final award, e.g. internal examiners’ comments on oral performance in seminars, tutorials, etc.
• Project defence examinations: assessment of project-defence will be conducted by one or more external examiners who will be assisted by one or more internal examiners. Where such an assessment is held for only a proportion of candidates, the criteria for the selection of candidates should be agreed upon with the external examiner in advance, and students concerned notified.
• Student performance in the courses assessed.
• Overall performance of the students in relation to their peers on comparable awards elsewhere.
• Strengths and weaknesses of students
• Quality of general and subject-specific knowledge and skills demonstrated by students.
• Structure, organization, design and marking of all examinations.
• Quality of teaching as indicated by student performance
• Lessons drawn from the assessments for the curriculum,
• Syllabus, teaching, learning and assessment methods and resources of the course.
• Any other recommendations arising from the assessments.
• The purpose of the report is to enable the Institute to judge whether the course is Meeting its stated objectives and to make necessary improvements either immediately or at the next review sitting as determined by senate.
• The external examiners have the authority to report directly to the Chairperson of the Senate if there is concern over standards of assessment and performance, particularly where they consider that assessments are being conducted in a way that jeopardizes either the fair treatment of individual students or the standard of the Institute’s awards. However, this should be done only on the understanding that the normal channels of communication (staff in charge of the course, Head of Department or Faculty Dean, Director of Quality) have already been exhausted or where such normal channels are inappropriate.
• External examining is a vital means of maintaining standards and providing information on outcomes for use in annual program review, a good process which should be practiced at all levels of the Institute. The role of the external examiner is to report to the department or the faculty on student outcomes as shown through assessment. The report may have implications for the way in which the program is designed and delivered, but it is for the department or the faculty, rather than the external examiner, to decide what changes should be made as a result.
• External examiners’ reports will always form part of the documentation used in annual program reviews, and the faculty will scrutinize both the reports and the records of the responses to them. Copies of these records should be kept in the Library, and at the Quality Assurance and Examinations Offices for future reference.

• The Institute requires each external examiner to submit a written report to the Chairperson of Senate within six weeks of completion of the annual examining process. At the end of the examiner’s term of office, the report should be extended to cover the entire examining period.
• The standard report form provided should be completed as comprehensively as possible and submitted direct to the Chairperson of Senate in the pre-paid envelope supplied. Copies will then be sent to the appropriate Head of Department, Vice-Rector (Academic), the Director of Academic Services, the Director of Academic Quality Assurance, and the Examinations Office.
• Departments are responsible for ensuring that within a reasonable time, external examiners are provided with a response to their comments and recommendations, including information on a detailed consideration of their reports, and an indication of any action taken as a result of the report, or clear reasons for not accepting any recommendations or suggestions. This kind of feedback is very crucial to quality improvement.

• External examiners’ reports are considered at appropriate Examiners Boards (Departmental, faculty, and Institute) and Senate. In addition, the Institute requires all faculties to carry out an annual documented review of their undergraduate degree programmes and send reports to the Quality Assurance office. SEE Procedure for monitoring of programmes document.
• The review report is submitted to the Quality Assurance Committee each year for monitoring of the review process, and the actions which departments propose to improve on programme provision, and correct deficiencies which are found.
• The Director, Quality Assurance who takes forward any major Institute-wide issues of significant concern to the Chairperson, Quality Assurance Committee and on to Senate, also scrutinizes all external Examiners’ reports.

Reports of external examiners will normally be available for discussion widely and in general within the Institute. It should not be possible, therefore, to identify individuals in these reports. However, exceptionally, an additional, separate and confidential report may be submitted to the Rector or to the Vice-Rector (Academic) if an external examiner considers this to be appropriate (such as highly confidential matters related to individual candidates). Such reports will be dealt with outside the normal committee procedures.

Please complete this form and return it to the Vice Rector Academic, Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in the enclosed prepaid envelope. Reports should normally be sent no later than six weeks after completion of the assessment process.

NAME ______________________________________________________________

ADDRESS ______________________________________________________________

DEGREE COURSE/SUBJECT EXAMINED ____________________________________

TENURE: If you were in post during the previous year, did you receive appropriate feedback on your report? ________________________

SECTION 2

Information on Key Documentation

1. Were you given adequate information on the aims and content of the programme(s), modules, and course allocated to you?----------------------
2. Were you given the Learning and teaching strategy of the modules, course allocated to you?----------------------------------------
3. Did you receive details of the following items in good time to provide feedback to the staff involved?

• Draft Exam papers---------------
• Course outlines---------------
• Exam/CAT scripts (as appropriate)----------
• Marking schemes-----------------
• Marking Criteria----------------------------------

• A copy of the nominee’s CV is attached.
• The nominee does not hold an unreasonable number of other appointment
• Level and subject of qualifications obtained by the nominee are appropriate to the provision
• The nominee has sufficient range and scope of experience in higher education or the relevant profession
• The nominee has experience of examining work at the level of the award.
• The nominee must not have been a KIST External examiner, member of staff or student for at least three years. In the case of former members of staff, sufficient time should have elapsed to enable students taught by that member to have passed through the system, whichever is the longer

Please return a copy to the Quality office