Basically put on capability for some mediocre student evaluations.

[Wildwitchofthewest]

Gutted. What do I do. Had a very pleasant and useful performance management meeting but basically I have been added to some kind of list by HR because of some teaching scores that are 1 point lower than they should be over three years. What shall. I do???

were there any specific areas of weakness given?

Point them in the direction of this paper and ask them what measures they have taken to remove unconscious and implicit bias in survey responses?
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216241

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants that is a very interesting paper and I think it is definitely partly a gender bias. Still very hurtful.

@RandomMess no specific advice as its based on a small sample of student evaluations, probably half of whom did not attend the lectures.

bias
additional known influences on evaluation include lecturer charisma (Shevlin et al 2010), workload and leniency of grading (Greenwald and Gillmore 1997; Berezvai et al 2020)
lack of correlation between evaluation outcomes and learning (Uttl et al 2017)
small sample
lack of multiple data points - only student evaluation with no other metrics? usual crappy evaluation practice
how are you supposed to address it with no other information?
Challenge it and the best of luck

Our crapper lecturers just grade high. It drives me crazy and students are upset then when they get my well-calibrated double checked been doing it for 10 years straight down the line grades. So ridiculous.

If you teach something like stats in a social science setting, you will always get a grade lower for evaluations than a 'fun, sexy' course like media. Again, completely unfair.

Our department does appear to realise this but another department did implement an evaluation process that did take account of scores, I agree going the gender evaluation route and perhaps involving the union is a possibility.

Oh my gosh that’s awful. There is so much research completely rubbishing student evaluations and showing how biased they are. For them to use them in performance management is terrible. They are biased against BAME and women. Men, even if mediocre, are given higher scores. It’s also inherently linked to what grades are given, as someone says above. So if Dr Mediocre Man gives a student a 70 but very limited feedback and puts in a generally half arsed show all year, the student will probably still be delighted. Meanwhile, a female academic might have awarded a 60 with clear guidance on how to improve and designed a curriculum that pushes students rather than indulges them and the students grade her lower because at the end of the day they just care about the grade.

There’s also evidence that exactly the same behaviour is regarded very differently depending on whether it comes from a man or a woman. Men are assertive and authoritative whereas women are shrill or have an attitude problem.

I’ve written before about nominations for teaching awards. In my department, nominations are often higher for men than women. Students feel compelled to reward male lecturers by nominating them in a way they don’t with female lecturers.

I wonder if you can speak to your union rep. I dislike the Union generally but many local branch reps are very good. I think there is a strong argument for discrimination if they are using a metric that has been shown to be biased.

The fact that institutions are increasingly using student evaluations as a management or promotion tool shows how shallow and performative all their talk of "equality and diversity" is. If they were really committed to equality and diversity, evaluations wouldn't play a part in any of this. As a BAME woman, this really pisses me off.

OP - is there a women's network or EDI committee that you can ask to take this issue on? Make a huge fuss about how the institution is using a system widely known to have a strong bias against women and minorities.

That’s absolutely rotten, OP, and totally unfair, especially given how many external factors will have influenced evaluations this last year. Have you seen that website by an NYU prof benschmidt.org/profGender/, which show the imbalance in ratings of female vs male lecturers?

Thanks for these helpful replies. It has left me feeling like I don't belong and should leave this toxic environment, but why should I throw everything away?

They are making dramatic cuts at our institution and I'm wondering if my head will be on the chopping block.

Is there a way to correllate the student feedback to which students have/haven't attended face-to-face teaching and engaged with the online feedback? I bet I can guess which way that correlation will go...