Adding examiners to the exam

The third step in the exam creation workflow for OSCE (after adding candidates and adding item sets) is adding examiners. For written exams, only the candidates and item set stages are necessary as there are no examiners present in the exam. 

The functionality is similar to adding candidates only with a few specific nuances explained in this article.

To access the examiner allocation tools, use the third box on the exam builder screen.

Requesting availability

The request availability feature enables you to send out a survey to the examiners in your examiner index to request them to provide their availability for your examining sessions. This is entirely optional. If you do not not want to request availability through the system you can skip to the allocating examiners section of this article.

To get started:

• Step 1 of 4

  Click Request availability.

  

• Step 2 of 4

  From the next screen, you have the option to compose an email message to your examiner cohort. Choose the group to which the email will be sent and Populate to transfer their email addresses to the Recipients box. Then compose your email using the dynamic placeholders as shown below. You can optionally redirect a test email to yourself to check the formatting.

  

  If you use the redirect email function, first remove all but one of the examiner emails otherwise you will receive a separate email for them all.

• Step 3 of 4

  Each examiner then receives an individualised email requesting them to provide availability for the exam. The recipient should click Respond.

  

• Step 4 of 4

  The respondent can then indicate a first and second choice as well as if they are unavailable.

  

Reviewing availability

Once the responses start to come in, you can view them directly in the system. Click Review availability.

From here you can see the responses provided by the examiners. You have further option to either close the poll for responses or send a follow-up email.

Allocating examiners

The next stage in the process is to allocate the examiners to the correct sessions in the exam. This can be carried out in three ways; using the availability data provided in the previous section, asking the system to randomly allocate or by uploading a spreadsheet of allocations. 

To get started with all three of these processes you will need to navigate to Allocate examiners.

Using provided availability

• Step 1 of 3

  Where availability data has been collected using the process described above, this will be visible from the Allocate examiners screen. The dark green shading shows a first choice and the light green a second choice. Where the examiner has said they are not available the button will say unavailable.

  

• Step 2 of 3

  Click one of the Available buttons to allocate the examiner to that session. The system will ask for confirmation of which role you would like the examiner to fulfil for that session. Click Assign role.

  

  Where an examiner has the marshal or observer role activated on their record the options will be Examiner, Observer and Marshal.

• Step 3 of 3

  Once assigned, the button will change and become inactive. The totals will also update accordingly.

  

Random allocation

It is possible to randomly allocate examiners from your examiner index to slots in the exam. To do so click Random allocation.

This will allocate both examiners and marshals per the structure of the exam (respecting any manual allocations made so far).

This method affords the least control over examiner allocation and is usually only suitable for testing or where generic examiner accounts are used.

Uploading the allocations from a spreadsheet

The third option is to upload a set of allocations from a spreadsheet. To get started:

• Step 1 of 4

  Click Upload examiner allocation.

  

• Step 2 of 4

  The next screen gives detailed information about the format required in the uploaded spreadsheet. Usually the best option is to download a template to put your data into.

  

  The ID is the only required field (providing examiners already exist in the examiner index). Uploading a list of IDs with no allocation information would allocate the candidates to random slots in the exam.

• Step 3 of 4

  The downloaded spreadsheet gives a full set of examiner and marshal slots into which you can insert your allocation data. A typical upload spreadsheet with structured examiner/slot data might look something like the below:

  

  In this case, our examiners already exist in our examiner index and so just an ID number is sufficient (the names and emails will be pulled in from the index). If we were loading examiners directly into the exam but they did not yet exist in the examiner index, the name and email fields would also need to be present in the upload spreadsheet.

  Where observers are added to a browser-based OSCE they will usually take up several rows per circuit in order that they can be added to all stations. Please see the observers article for further details.

• Step 4 of 4

  Select your saved allocations spreadsheet from your computer and Upload file.

  

  In the example shown, examiners will be uploaded into the specific slots given in the spreadsheet.

Some key things to remember in terms of the relationship between the examiner upload and the examiner index:

• If the ID provided in the upload file does not already exist in examiner index, then a new examiner profile is created in the examiner index using the provided data.
• If the ID already exists in the examiner index, the examiner's existing profile data (name, email) will be pulled into the exam.
• If the ID already exists in the examiner index but the data (name, email) within the allocation file differs from the existing profile data, the profile data will be replaced accordingly.

Once the initial allocation has been made you need to click Close allocation for this to be saved and registered.

Making manual changes

Once an initial allocation has been made the Make manual changes option will become available in the Examiners menu.

The Make manual changes option enables you to make granular changes to the allocations on records that have already been added using once of the bulk methods, or to add and remove examiner records from the exam.

The view defaults to the first block and session of the exam. To change the block or session view choose from the dropdown menus and click Show examiners.

Add a new examiner to the exam

To add a new examiner into the exam:

• Step 1 of 3

  Click Add an examiner to this session.

  

• Step 2 of 3

  On the next screen, enter a search term and click Search.

  

• Step 3 of 3

  From here you can select the examiner from your examiner index that you want to add to the exam. You can choose to add them into the select session or several and also which role they should fulfil (should they have more than one role present in the examiner index). Any examiners that are already assigned are marked as such in the list. Click Add to add the examiner.

  

Remove an examiner from the exam

To remove an examiner from the exam, click Remove against the row.

Adjust an examiner's position and role within the exam

The examiner's room and circuit allocation is shown in the respective dropdown fields. These can be adjusted by selecting an alternative value from the dropdown menu.

Where an examiner has marshal or observer role activated on their record you will also be able to select which role they should fulfil in that session.

Marshals do not need to have a room assigned, but they should belong to a specific circuit. Observers need a separate allocation for each room in the exam you would like them to have access to.

Communicating allocations

Communicating their allocations back to examiners is covered in the dedicated article here.