External Assessor – Child Health for Pre-registration Nursing

Teaching at the Open University is through supported open learning – for Nursing this is all online and with the exception of induction tutorials, all tuition is also online. As we develop our online module resources we are required to appoint an experienced educationalist in the area being developed who has access to the developing materials and the module team and can advise the team and the university on the quality of the resources. The university seeks confidence of quality from the External Assessor before the module goes live for our students. Given that we will be seeking NMC approval for four fields of practice – Adult, Child Health (new to us), Learning Disabilities (new to us) and Mental Health; and the fact that we are significantly altering the structure of the programme and therefore building the entire 360 credits new, the university has agreed that rather than appoint just at module level, we can and should appoint with due regard at qualification level – hence the four year contract. The appointed External Assessor for Child Health will review all six 60 credit modules – three of which focus entirely on practice. I do see opportunities for the appointed External Assessors to be with the presenting programme team at NMC approval.