External Examiners and Inspera

General Guidance

External Examiners can access Inspera for reviewing content in both Author and Grade if the School are happy for them to access content directly in Inspera.

Inspera is integrated into Canvas, as long as an external examiner has appropriate access to the Canvas Course, they can either review a question set (exam content) or review marking.

If your External Examiner is new to using Canvas, you will need to direct them to appropriate training and/or resources. You could share the Accessing Canvas webpage.

Please note that NUIT services would need to create an external colleague’s University account. If you need an external set up with a university account, please seek support from IT services and/or review the Registering for an account webpage.

The Inspera Digital Exams Team recommend that if your External Examiner has never accessed Inspera before, to check out our Getting Started with Inspera webpage for context of how we are using the digital exam platform at Newcastle University.

Reviewing Inspera questions and question sets (Author)

There are a couple of ways you can share your question set content with other colleagues or your external examiners:

• Add them as a contributor to the question set.
• Share a PDF copy of the question set.

Add them as a contributor to the question set

You may find it useful to add them as a 'contributor' to your question set. This will allow them to view questions and preview them in Inspera. Once they are added as a contributor, the external examiner will be able to access Inspera via their usual means (either by accessing an existing Inspera test in Canvas or by logging in to Inspera directly). Once in Inspera, the external examiner would then be able to access any question sets you have added them to. Please ensure you confirm the exact naming or URL of the question set to the external examiner.

How to add contributors to your question set: 

1. Access Inspera 
2. Navigate to the Author area 
3. In the search bar, type the question set name or the module code to find a list of available question sets for your module 
4. Find the question set you wish to print and click on the name to open this 
5. Select the three horizontal dots in the top right corner of the screen 
6. Then select the ‘Share with users’ option 
7. On the Share with users page, you will see the list of colleagues who the question set is currently shared with. You can use the search field to search for the name of the colleague you are wishing to add to the question set. 
8. Once you have located the name of the colleague, you can click share to grant them access. You can choose to unselect the ‘notify via e-mail' option if you do not wish an email to be sent. 

Unable to find the person’s name in the search results?

Provided the external examiner has accessed both Canvas and Inspera previously, you should be able to find their name when searching.

If you cannot find a user when searching for their name, it is likely that they have not accessed Inspera via Canvas yet, and therefore do not have an Inspera account. They would need to access Inspera via Canvas to activate this, and for their name to show in the list. There are instructions on how to access Inspera via Canvas to activate their account on the Getting Started with Inspera webpage. 

Share a PDF copy of the question set

Alternatively, you may wish to consider the option of downloading a PDF copy of the question set content from Inspera to share the question set content with them. See the FAQ 'Can I print my question set?' to find out how to download a PDF copy. 

Reviewing Inspera marks and feedback (Grade)

For marking using Inspera, all colleagues and externals access the digital exam’s Grade area in the same way.

1. Within the Canvas Course select ‘Assignments’ and click on the relevant exam title. All summative digital exams will reflect the exam date, time and module title.
   
2. Once selected, the assignment area links to the Inspera exam, click the Load button to access the exam:
   
3. An Inspera ‘landing page’ will open all Exam settings (this is called the Deliver Tab).
4. Click on the orange button called’ Open in Grade’.

The Digital Exams Team have dedicated information for Markers on our Marking Exams in Inspera webpage, which showcases video guides as well as written step by step guidance should any External Examiner need more information about navigating the marking workspaces.

Important Note: External Examiners accessing Inspera exams on the system, will have the same access as Graders and would be able to amend marks. We do recommend you make this clear to any external accessing an Inspera exam, as they should review only and be careful not to make changes. 

Samples

If your School would like a sample of marking to be presented to your External Examiner, without requiring Inspera access. Submissions can be downloaded as PDFs we have video guidance on retrieving and printing student submissions and written guidance on our dedicated administrator (PS Colleague) webpage; please see FAQ ‘I need to collect a sample pf student submissions from an Inspera exam’.