Acting as an external examiner for a degree course is one of those roles for which academics typically receive no guidance or training. This is quite striking given how much authority an external examiner has over the degrees awarded to students. The experience is very different from being the external examiner for a PhD, for which there is plenty of advice out there, along with some profoundly differing opinions. Here however I’m referring to the role of assessing a taught undergraduate or Masters-level course at another university. This post is very much a personal perspective because even over the course of a long career any one individual only gains a limited experience, and mine has been entirely within Europe, so please add or qualify in the comments.

How do you become an external examiner?

Opportunities for external examiners are seldom advertised externally which means they are usually allocated through networks and personal connections rather than a transparent process. That doesn’t overly concern me because finding external examiners is difficult and I’d rather not place any more barriers in the way of course directors. I doubt that an open recruitment would attract many candidates, we would spend a long time on it, and I suspect in most cases we’d fall back on calling a friend anyway. It’s also not an easy job with much remuneration, as will become clear lower down, so really it’s a favour you do for friends and colleagues more than an opportunity. That being said, here are the main ways to get involved.

• The most common method is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which usually means at a conference bar at a moment of weakness. One moment you’re sharing a drink with a colleague, the next they’re casually mentioning that they have a vacancy for an external, and by the time they’ve bought the next round you’ve signed up for the next three years.
• Related to this is to be recommended by someone else, usually by a more experienced academic who was approached at the conference bar and still had the wherewithal to say “No, but I know a great person you should try.”
• Ask during your development or performance review. Letting your line manager know that you’re on the lookout for opportunities means they can pass any on to you, as well as signalling that you’re trying to broaden your external responsibilities.
• Let the world know! I’ve never seen anyone put an open call out on social media but if you’re really keen then I doubt you’d be left waiting for long.

What does the role involve?

There doesn’t seem to be a standard list of expectations, or at least every institution for which I’ve acted as examiner has asked me to do something slightly different. Some combination of the following are usually involved though. Typically it involves a few days of preparation beforehand and one or two days at the university itself per year.

• Checking exam papers is always an important element. Spotting mistakes is part of this, but more important is to ensure that the questions are clear and easily comprehensible. A module convenor who is deep into the material can sometimes need a little help to make sure that others will understand things the same way that they do. It’s also necessary to check that the expectations are reasonable for the level of the students and the time available.
• These days vivas are no longer standard for all undergraduate students but in some places remain expected for taught post-graduates. Often a subset of the cohort is invited to a viva. These might be useful to make decisions about borderline candidates, find out more about a particular student who faced personal difficulties during their degree, or just to check that overall standards match up with your expectations of strong and weak students. I find them very useful for gathering some informal feedback about the content and delivery of the course, although this can also be achieved by holding open meetings or course surveys.
• Review the exam scripts or coursework. There is always far more of this than you can cover in the time available to you so this is necessarily selective. Sometimes you might take a deep dive into a module with unusual mark distribution, or track the performance of a particular student who needs special attention. Other times you might just pick a box of papers at random. Your role isn’t to check or amend the marks, it’s more to make sure that they align with the university’s own grade descriptions.
• Attend the final exam board. At this your main responsibility is to make sure that the university applies their own rules consistently and correctly so that candidates get the degree classifications that they deserve. Sometimes the rules are bizarre and hard to justify but it’s not within your power to fix them or propose different ones. All you can do is make sure that the university is doing what they claim to.
• Submit a final report at the end of the academic year. This is normally the trigger that allows you to get paid. In this you are asked to respond to a set of questions which is determined by the university, usually related to the overall standards and practices you’ve seen on the course. You can ask for reports from previous examiners to see whether there are long-standing issues and how they have been addressed in the past.
• To clear up one common misconception, you’re not there to evaluate the accuracy of module content, even in areas of your expertise. You have to respect the academic independence of your colleagues to teach what they want in the manner that they choose. I’m not going to declare that r/K selection is out-of-date, or that CSR theory is an abomination against reason, even if I believe both to be the case¹.

The term of an external examiner is usually three years, sometimes with an opportunity to extend for another year, but not much longer. The principle of changing externals to get different insights is an important one. In my experience you spend the first year just trying to understand the course and it takes until the second or third year before you can start making properly informed observations and recommendations.

What are the benefits?

• You get paid! How much you receive varies widely between universities but even at best it in no way compensates you for the actual time spent. In other words, don’t do it for the money. A nominal fee does at least help you to feel that your expertise is appreciated.
• You get to visit another university. This is a much bigger benefit than the pay. If they’re doing things properly and haven’t suffered from ruinous budget cuts (hello to my friends in UK universities) then you should be offered the costs of travel, a stay at a hotel and a nice meal out at their expense. Perhaps this can lead to new collaborations or connections that otherwise might not have developed.
• It exposes you to lots of new ideas. Some of these might be approaches to teaching that you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. Alternatively you might learn from the mistakes made by others. Seeing how other people and institutions deal with the challenges of teaching and supporting students can help you to improve practices at your own institution.
• There’s also a great deal of reassurance that comes from finding out that a different set of colleagues in another city or country are struggling with the same issues that you are. Whether it’s the use of LLMs in coursework, the difficulties involved in teaching to students with English as a second language, or dealing with ever-declining lecture attendance, you might not find the answers but you can come away with the feeling that at least it’s not just you.
• People have to listen to you. There are very few moments in an academic career when you say something and your audience are obliged to hear you out, respect what you say, and then respond to it. Ultimately you submit a report with some recommendations and these need to be acted upon (or if not then provide a justification). Aside from boosting your ego it’s a rare opportunity to have your expertise lead directly to changes which are hopefully beneficial to students or the teaching of your discipline. This can be very satisfying.

What are the biggest challenges?

• Top of the list for me are virtual learning environments (VLEs). Most modern universities use one of Moodle (relatively good), Canvas (ok once you understand the layout) or Blackboard (an offence to the dignity of all who encounter it). Every university adopts different policies for setting up modules, which are interpreted in wildly variable ways by individual academics. I often spend around 50% of my time as an examiner just trying to access pages and find the information I need.
• IT security is simply not designed with external examiners in mind. Normally you need a new institutional email account, which allows you access to their system, and is annoyingly the only way they ever contact you. This includes setting your password to get onto the systems. Expect many headaches.
• Moving onto actual pedagogical issues, the mixed approaches to assessment and evaluation you observe can be challenging to understand. As time goes on I’ve become more accepting of this in that any single assessment is unlikely to shape the outcome of a whole degree which aggregates across lots of modules. Nevertheless it continues to surprise me what some teachers think are appropriate ways to test or reward student achievement.

I hope this helps to clarify a little of what’s going on behind the scenes of a task that is sometimes quite mysterious. I’ve enjoyed all my external examiner positions² and have gained a great deal from them professionally. If you get asked then you can feel flattered and I hope your experiences are as positive as mine.

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¹ Go on, try me.

² Funnily enough I don’t have one at the moment. No, I’m not looking.