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IT Services Knowledge Base

You are here Blackboard VLE > External Examiners

External examiners

Overview

If you are an external examiner, then the following pages will help you understand how to access the necessary Trinity IT systems for your role.

For more general information about the external examination process in Trinity College, including external examiners' policies and procedures, please see the Trinity Teaching and Learning web pages.

General information about External Examinations

Getting a Trinity computer account

To access the necessary Trinity IT systems for your role, you will need a Trinity computer account.

The nominating Trinity School or Department must request a Trinity computer account on your behalf from the Trinity Human Resources department.

If this hasn't occurred, please contact your nominating School or Department.

After your account application is processed, you will receive an email, from hr@tcd.ie, with a password-protected PDF. This PDF will contain your Trinity account username and password. Please note, there will be no email mailbox associated with this computer account.

When signing into Trinity IT systems such as Blackboard, enter your Trinity computer account username in the form username@tcd.ie. If you omit the '@tcd.ie' part, the login will fail.

If you do not receive your new account details, please contact the Human Resources department.

Password Manager

As soon as you receive your computer account, we recommend you register for the Password Manager service.

This service will allow you to:

  • Change your password, even if it has expired
  • Unlock a locked account

If you are having issues logging into a Trinity IT system, the Password Manager service will let you know the current status of your account. For example, if your password has expired or not.

For more information about how to activate and use the Password Manager service, please see the below link.

Password Manager Overview

Password expiration on computer accounts

Passwords associated with computer accounts in Trinity college expire every 180 days (approximately 6 months).

If you have not used your computer account since the last external examination process, then there is a good chance that your password will have expired and will need to be changed before you can access the Trinity systems again.

Expired passwords can be changed via the Password Manager service, provided you still know what the expired password is.

Changing your expired password via Password Manager

If you don't know what the expired password is, you can contact the IT Service Desk or ask your nominating Trinity School or Department to contact them on your behalf.

Locked computer accounts

If your account has become locked due to multiple wrong passwords being entered, then you can unlock the account via the Password Manager service - provided you had registered for the service before the account became locked.

Unlocking your account via Password Manager

If you had not registered for Password Manager before the account became locked, you can contact the IT Service Desk or ask your nominating Trinity School or Department to contact them on your behalf.

Accessing the required IT systems for your role

To carry out your role as an external examiner, you may be required to access one or both of the following IT systems:

  1. Blackboard
  2. Microsoft Teams

Blackboard

Blackboard is the Virtual Learning Environment used in College.

For you to carry out your examiner role in Blackboard, the nominating Trinity School or Department must have enrolled you on the relevant Blackboard modules that you are asked to review.

If this hasn't occurred, please contact the nominating Trinity School or Department.

For more details about how to log in to Blackboard successfully, please see our web page linked below.

Accessing Blackboard

For more help and guides on using Blackboard, click on the Staff Help menu item - once logged into Blackboard.

Microsoft Teams

You may be required to conduct an online paperless Court of Examiners via Microsoft Teams.

For more details about how to use Microsoft Teams for an online paperless Court of Examiners, please see our web page linked below.

Paperless Court of Examiners via Microsoft Teams

Further help

Computer accounts

If you have not received a computer account, please:

  • Ask the nominating Trinity School or Department if they have requested a Trinity computer account on your behalf
  • If the account has been requested but not issued, check with the Trinity Human Resources department on the status of the account

If you are having issues logging in, use the Password Manager service to determine if your:

Blackboard

If you can't log in to Blackboard:

If you are logged into Blackboard but can't access/see the correct modules:

  • Ask the nominating Trinity School or Department if they have enrolled you on the relevant Blackboard modules

For further help with using Blackboard:

  • Click on the Staff Help menu item inside Blackboard

Microsoft Teams

If you can't log in to Microsoft Teams via office.tcd.ie: