Blackboard access for external examiners

Through the Administration Undertaken by Academics project (part of the Academic Working Practices programme), some academic staff said they would like their external examiner be able to access their Blackboard site.  For many years it has been possible to request an account which gives an external examiner access to Blackboard, but this does not seem to have been widely known.

In response to this feedback from the project, we have changed our processes to ensure that a Blackboard account is created for every external examiner automatically, thus eliminating the academic staff time needed to request the accounts, and notify staff about the account creation.

Once a new external examiner has been appointed and attended induction, they will receive an email with their login details. The staff member identified as the contact for the external examiner (practice differs in each Faculty) will also be notified that an account was created for that external examiner. Accounts have been created and notifications sent for all existing external examiners already.

By default your external examiner will not have access to your Blackboard site. If you wish them to have access, you will need to enrol them on the appropriate site using the Staff Enrolment Tool, as you would for Sheffield Hallam staff members.

These same account details will be used by the external examiners to access the SharePoint site for moderation of assessment tools and exam papers.

If there are any questions about these external examiner accounts, please contact the external examiner team, Naomi Hardy and Ruth Feather.

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