Managing Examiners (or Assessors) is a task that is conducted by the vast majority of awarding bodies, and since each Awarding Organisation is different the requirements of Examiner Management Teams can vary widely.

One of the key tasks when managing events is deciding which examiner is going to be assigned to it.  On the face of it, selecting an Examiner seems like a very simple process – and sometimes it can be, but often it can be challenging.  The questions an Examiner Management Team is likely to ask might include:

• Is this person qualified to assess particular levels, grades or disciplines of qualification used in this event?
• Is the Examiner an employee or subcontracted, and do they have a minimum number of hours that need to be fulfilled?
• How many hours has the Examiner already been scheduled to complete this month?
• Is there a conflict of interest to consider?
• Does the Examiner have any other obligations on the day?
• What is the proximity of the Examiner from the location of the event?
• Has the Examiner been to this location before? How did it go?

Answering these questions is only one part of a series of jobs undertaken by an Examiner Management Team (other tasks might well include standardisation, moderation, recruitment, CPD etc).  In order to understand these questions, the team must build up an internal knowledge base around both the schools, centres and the Examiner as well as understanding the schedule of the entire AO.  An Examiner may be free on the day, but they may not be able to travel over 300 miles in an afternoon to be in a different location for their next appointment.

ExamTrack has helped many awarding bodies to deal with these challenges.  Drawing on the expertise of the in-house Examiner Management Teams, ExamTrack has devised mechanisms to employ Artificial Intelligence in the selection of examiners for different tasks.  Whittling hundreds of examiners down to a handful for selection is a job which used to take hours, but now takes seconds with ExamTrack.  Using this shortlist, internal staff can efficiently allocate the most appropriate examiners. The bulk of the allocation work is now done by ExamTrack, freeing the team to work on other tasks.

ExamTrack is dedicated to reducing the time and effort needed to manage these highly complex yet laborious jobs, and we continue to innovate and develop our technology to further enhance these features for our clients.  We are developing many different novel approaches to these types of challenges and using AI for examiner selection is just the beginning.