Senior Clinical Examinations Officer (PSRB)

Job description

King’s College London is seeking candidates at all levels of experience with the drive and passion to deliver high quality customer service to support our strategic aims. 

 

The role forms part of a busy assessment and examination team within the Faculty Education Services (PSRB) department. It is responsible for providing a professional and quality service to students and academics in the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine (FoLSM).

 

We are seeking an enthusiastic, proactive administrator who is committed to providing an excellent clinical exam provision. The role will be expected to share the lead of the operational coordination across; exam content, scheduling and running the event, examiner and invigilator recruitment, mark sheet production, results processing and student feedback. Working with a broad range of stakeholders and across several hospital sites.

 

The post holder must be an excellent communicator able to present information clearly and concisely with experience of servicing assessment boards and producing reports. Applicants must have excellent IT skills, in particular Microsoft Excel and some experience of a student record system and/or VLE would be beneficial.  The role holder will be expected to manage a varied workload often across competing priorities, requiring the ability to negotiate and influence to deliver an excellent service.

 

This role sits within the Faculty Education Services in FoLSM at our London Bridge campus – visit the King’s HR pages for more information    www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/index-new.aspx  

 
 

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract

This is a full-time post

 

Key responsibilities

Role purpose 

To deliver a professional and service centric assessment provision for clinical examinations (OSCEs), supporting the requirements of the professional programmes within the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine (FoLSM)

 

To coordinate a team of Clinical Examination Officers within Faculty Educational Service (FES) ensuring a consistent, accurate and timely service across all operational activity, including station content/blueprint production, scheduling and running exams, examiner and invigilation recruitment, mark sheet and results processing and production of a range of student feedback

 

To support with servicing duties to Assessment Boards ensuring board paperwork is accurate and completed in good time. Maintaining up to date knowledge of College and programme regulations and relevant external PSRB standards in order to provide authoritative guidance to both students and academic colleagues

 

To ensure a responsive and personable student enquiry service with a coordinated approach to communications and production of publications, such as programme handbooks, mark schemes, OSCE handbooks and guidance

 

Role profile

Working closely with the Head of Assessment & Examinations to coordinate clinical assessment activity across the full academic cycle; proactively contributing to the production of operational plans. Proactively coordinating with hospital sites, the Chantler SAIL Centre and working closely with clinical and assessment leads

•         

To manage the timely production of examination timetables across all summative and formative OSCEs. Delivering reliable and effective scheduling of examinations across multiple sites simultaneously, managing resit timetables and planning sufficient often shared resourcing for each event

 

To liaise with academic leads and proactively manage the collation of station content, instruction and exam blueprint; supporting standard setting and ensuring adherence to quality assurance standards, external examiner scrutiny and print deadlines

 

To co-ordinate proof-reading requirements, checking spelling, grammar, punctuation numbering of questions and labelling of answer options; ensuring all approval processes have been applied in good time.  The role is not responsible for checking the medical /scientific /clinical or specialty content 

•       

Responsible for managing the OSCE question bank; maintaining the accuracy and currency of question data, recording usage, reliability and performance indicators; recording the provenance of questions and associated statistics.  Making sure data is securely stored with appropriate permission restrictions

 

To manage the software programming requirements and ensure systems are up to date and able to support the effective administration and quality assurance of processing activity; including scanning software and results processing algorithms’

 

Responsible for running all OSCE events; booking venues, arranging invigilation and recruiting examiners. Supporting with ‘station’ set up and equipment checks. Ensuring mark sheets are available at venues along with all other materials and that effective routines are in place for the collection and reconciliation of mark sheets 

 

Responsible for arranging secure transport and storage, logging, labelling and subsequent scanning and data collection for marking routines, including that which is outsourced to electronic marking providers

 

Coordinating training requirements for all non-academic roles that enable the event to run; including comprehensive training for invigilators and for professional service colleagues who volunteer to help support the running of event 

 

Responsible for managing the production of results and feedback, ensuring adherence to processing deadlines, mark schemes and programme regulations; proactively monitoring accuracy of mark sheet completion and feedback on time, ensuring results are entered accurately onto SITS, that feedback routines are met; proactively identifying and escalating delays or risk to processing as necessary

 

Responsible for the day to day organisation of tasks within the team, ensuring all activity is well planned and where necessary in conjunction with the Head of Assessment & Examinations prioritised where there are conflicting priorities across a varied workload 

 

To support on staffing matters; such as induction and ongoing training, coordination of annual leave and feedback to annual personal development reviews; escalating issues or concerns with performance to the Head of Assessment & Examinations

 

To support with student communication, providing timely notification of exam dates, times and venues, coordinating results publication through SITS/Student Records. To assist with the generic assessment mailbox ensuring students are appropriately supported and that emails are responded to within 24/48hrs 

 

Responsible for ensuring PAA (student personal assessment provision) is supported where agreed, liaising with the central exams team, the Faculty Health & Wellbeing Lead and central Disability services to coordinate approved adjustments 

 

To contribute and support with the calculation of annual progression requirements, and standardisation of final marks, merits and distinctions identifying those students eligible for further attempts, exits awards and academic prizes

 

To provide servicing responsibilities to Assessment Boards producing timely OSCE exam analysis and supporting the wider FES Assessment team with the annual cycle of meetings, room bookings, production of agenda, attendance records and secure distribution of papers and formal minute writing  

 

To be conversant and proactively maintain up to date knowledge of College assessment regulations, programme specifications and marking schemes. To be able to confidently provide advice to academic colleagues, external partners and colleagues across the FES

 

To be able to contribute to reports on assessment process performance, proactively identifying risk to either student experience or programme quality assurance, escalating as necessary.  Assisting with information for internal and statutory external agencies such the GMC, QAA and MSC 

 

To ensure information and accuracy of documentation which supports the shared operational activity across the FES, particularly that stored on the shared server drive and SharePoint: including standard templates for letters, forms and publications, maintaining singular repositories for academic/site staff contact lists and supporting procedures for effective version control of all documentation

 

Accountable for the data quality of assessment records, ensuring record keeping is accurately maintained and is of a highly organised standard, able to withstand the scrutiny of audit at short notice.  This high standard extends across all record keeping whether on spreadsheets, paper or the SITS student record; whether current or archived and in accordance with agreed retention schedules

 

To support the Head of Assessment & Examinations in the delivery of technological advances with SITS, and other new applications; identifying enhancements to clinical examinations process and supporting with implementing changes to procedures and ways of working

 

To be a representative of the FES at Faculty and College meetings, leading by example to ensure colleagues within the FES participate and engage with events, including being scheduled for reception cover, enrolment, examinations and graduation  

 

To ensure all work is carried out in a professional and timely manner; with appropriate confidentiality and sensitivity. The role is expected to maintain up to date knowledge of Data Protection and Freedom of Information requirements

 

To contribute to administrative process review ensuring that the FES delivers a service led provision, recognising the value of continuous improvement and enhancements to student experience

 
 

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.  

Skills, knowledge, and experience 

Essential criteria  

1.      Degree or equivalent

2.      Excellent communication and presentation skills; demonstrable ability to present information clearly, accurately and concisely to diverse audiences

3.      Excellent time management with the ability to organise, and plan effectively across competing priorities

4.      Excellent attention to detail with methodical, exacting standards of written and numerical accuracy

5.      Able to manage individual and others workload to ensure overall team standards and performance are delivered

6.      Ability to make timely informed decisions and independently resolve problems

7.      Previous HE or event coordination experience; with an emphasis on working across a range of assessment activity

8.      Excellent IT experience, across all Microsoft packages; advanced excel user and experience of production of analytical data reporting

9.      Able to negotiate and influence across organisational boundaries to deliver  a timely positive outcome diplomatically

10.   Demonstrative enthusiasm, drive and initiative; adopts a proactive approach

11.   Desire to work to professional standards with integrity, honesty and confidentiality

 

Desirable criteria

1.      Evidence of experience of reviewing a process or system, and contributing to enhancing procedural systems

2.      Evidence of capability to interpret and apply College and programme regulations maintaining up to date knowledge of external statutory compliance obligations 

 

Further information

Interviews are provisionally scheduled for 24 April 2023