Professor Maria Cordina from the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and Professor Joseph Cacciottolo from the Faculty of Arts presented a joint paper at 8th International Conference on Higher Education Advances held in Valencia in June 2022 on behalf of the Visiting Lectures and External Examiners Committee (VLECC).
The paper entitled ‘External assessors' reports – do they provide valid and useful information?’ analysed external examiners’ reports for Bachelors and Masters programmes of study ran by all the Faculties at the University of Malta. The literature provided a paucity of information related to this area of study. Therefore the work presented was highly innovative in that it is first to highlight the need for quality analysis of free text external examiners’ reports. An innovative template was purposely designed to grade all reports received by the UM in a particular academic year. All reports were independently screened by two assessors. This provided useful insights into the quality and timelines of the reports submitted as well as objective insights into the manner of teaching and assessment at the University of Malta. The paper identified areas of improvement with regards to the appointment of external examiners as well as with the process used for evaluation.
The paper was very well received by a number of international academics and is leading to future collaboration with other universities in this area. The full paper as published by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia may be viewed here.