Workshop report: External examiners
Introduction
The role of the external examiner of undergraduate health care programmes: a joint workshop run by the subject centres for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine and Health Sciences and Practice held in London in December 2004.
External examining is a current major issue for the health education sector as it is for all subject areas and there is a strong need to address the issues arising from the changing role and accountabilities of external examiners. In response to this need the subject centres for Medicine Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine and for Health Sciences and Practice held a joint workshop in December on the role of the external examiner in the health care context. The workshop was partially funded with a grant from the Academy External Examiners project.
Through the workshop we sought to draw on the work of that project as well as on the expertise of practitioners, in order to develop effective support for external examiners in the health care sector.
The event was aimed at newly appointed and experienced external examiners of undergraduate health care courses, senior curriculum managers seeking to improve their induction programmes for external examiners and staff developers who wished to provide training to prospective external examiners.
The model
The day began with an overview of the work that has been done on this issue and an outline of the input/process/output model for external examining developed as part of the project. This was then used as the basis for the first group activity in which the aim was to contextualize the model in the health care context. Three groups of approximately ten were formed and flip charts were used in combination with post-it notes to provide a structure for the feedback.
Each group was facilitated by one of the three speakers. The group work was stimulating and effective and was followed by a very constructive and valuable discussion in the plenary feedback session. We felt that real progress had been made in terms of applying the model to the health care context and that the model itself was a valuable heuristic tool. Of course in practice there was substantial overlap across the three stages of the model and it was clear that a rigid division was neither desirable nor possible.
Scenarios
In the afternoon the groups were each given a scenario based on situations drawn from the experience of external examiners. In the first scenario more than 60% of the first year students had failed a particular component of the course, the second concerned the issue of upgrading borderline students and the third related to what to do if the centre ignores an external examiners recommendations. The groups were invited to discuss the issues they felt arose from the case studies and to suggest how they would have responded. The session proved both stimulating and practical and gave delegates an opportunity to explore a range of typical problems that external examiners may have to face and to identify the underlying principles of effective practice in the role.
For the final session we used buzz groups combined with plenary feedback to outline and define the respective responsibilities of the institutions, course/programme leaders and external examiners’ themselves. In practice we found that there was substantial overlap between the institutional and team leader responsibilities.
Findings
All of the findings were written up for initial circulation to the group for comment and suggestions and we hope to produce a short guide to external examining contextualized to health care. Overall the evaluations of the day were very positive and there was a strong consensus that we had been able to make real progress in exploring the issue of the role of the external examiner in the health care education context. There was also real interest in continuing to engage with the issues through ongoing networking and further meetings as appropriate and we have now set up an ephorum to discuss these issues. This can be accessed at: www.health.heacademy.ac.uk/phorum/ ‘Health Education External Examiners Network’.
Resources
A full report on the workshop including the PowerPoint slides, summaries of the flip charts produced by the groups and the scenarios is available at www.medev.ac.uk/workshop_resources/30/list_contents
For more information: nigel.purcell@medev.ac.uk
