Bias in teaching evaluations

This weekend's reading list focuses on an issue we've all had experience with, students and teachers alike.

It's getting towards the end of term, and you know what that means: student feedback forms for all of your lectures. But there's a few things you might not know about these teaching evaluations.

Firstly, the government intends to use your feedback on teaching (specifically in the form of the National Student Survey, or NSS) to allow universities to charge you higher tuition fees, through something called the Teaching Excellence Framework or TEF. Some people (including the British Medical Association) think this alone is a good enough reason to boycott the NSS, but we'll leave that up to you.

Secondly, your lecturers and TAs actually read the anonymous feedback you give, and take it to heart. This can be a very nice feeling, like when a student notices something we've worked hard to improve or appreciates the extra effort we've gone to, or a very bad feeling, like when a student makes negative comments about our appearance, our personality or our intelligence. In fact, almost every one of the countless articles online that advise lecturers on how to deal with student feedback has advice along the lines of 'don't take it personally'. We cherish every positive comment we get, often for years, but the negative ones can sting pretty badly.

Finally, and most importantly, it has been established that teaching evaluations are subject to all kinds of bias. Women and people of colour consistently receive worse feedback than their white, male colleagues. (Very little research is done on bias in teaching evaluations against non-heterosexual people, people with disabilities, and non-gender conforming people.) Because teaching evaluations are often used in decisions about who to hire or who to promote, bias in teaching evaluations can lead to fewer women and people of colour progressing in their careers.

That's why this topic relevant to this blog: bias in teaching evaluations contributes to pay inequalities and more time spent on zero-hours and casualised contracts for the victims of that bias. This in turn leads to lower pensions for women and people of colour, since the introduction of career-average pensions.

To be clear, we don't want to do away with teaching evaluations completely: they are a very useful tool for us to improve our teaching and evaluate changes we've made in our modules (this is especially true when we use them during the term, when there is still time to make changes). Additionally, hearing students' perspectives can let us see things in a new light, giving us fresh ideas and highlighting areas for improvement. We really welcome constructive feedback!

But we reject to their use as a tool for university administrators to evaluate and decide on the worth of teaching staff individually and departments as a whole. We think they are another brick in the wall of corporatization in higher education. And we certainly reject the idea of linking good feedback to higher tuition fees.

So what can you do to help? You can keep all this in mind the next time a teaching evaluation comes your way. You can query members UCL's Senior Management Team on what they're doing to address these issues. You can contact your local parliamentary candidates about what they intend to do about the TEF. And you can continue to support our strike to fight back against casualisation, pay inequality, and damage to our pensions.

You can read more about bias in teaching evaluations, and why it's bad for both students and teachers, at the following links.

• Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters
• Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students.
• Student Evaluations and Gendered Expectations: What We Can't Count Can Hurt Us
• Student Evaluations: Feared, Loathed, and Not Going Anywhere
• Student Evaluations, Grade Inflation, and Declining Student Effort
• Student Evaluations of Teaching are Not Valid 

Protest songs from around the world

It's Friday! To give our picketers a bit of inspiration (and inspired in turn by the great teach out at the Institute of Education), we're happy to present a series of protest songs and songs about social justice from around the world. Can you spot the theme?

Barricades (Yiddish)

The Victory of the Cloak-makers (Yiddish)

Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit (Greenlandic national anthem)

Still Here (Welsh)

And instead of a protest song in Kîîtharaka (a free pint to the first person to post one!) we offer a song in Quebec French, the focus of some discussion at Strike School:

Half-Mast (Quebec French)

We can't promise we'll have them memorised by Monday, but we'll be very impressed if you do. Think we've missed one? Add it in the comments below, or tweet us at @CHonStrike!

Case study: The new norm in academia

We asked strikers to tell us about their personal experiences of how the themes of the strike have affected them. Below, we hear from someone who has been stuck on short-term contracts for a decade. Contracts for post-docs can range from six months to a maximum of about three years, and every new contract may mean moving to a new city or even a new country. As you can imagine, this insecurity has a big impact on life decisions like buying a house or having a child, and can put huge pressures on relationships.

I am still not sure I’ll stay in academia

For a good while I thought my career path was rather unusual, and I was always (apologetically) highlighting this when describing my experience and career progress. It was only fairly recently that I started to realise that, actually, my path is the new norm for early career researchers. If I had known this from the beginning, I am not sure I’d still be in academia. I am still not sure I’ll stay.

I am one these new “career-postdocs”, ie. working on externally funded projects year after year (it’s 10 years this year since my PhD!). If I'm lucky, my contract will be for 3 years but sometimes I have had contracts for 6 months or less and tied over ends and beginnings of different projects with zero-hours teaching contracts. I have a partner who has a permanent position so I was never in a situation where I had serious concerns how to pay the next rent but there definitely have been times when this worry was not far off. The realities are now that:

1. there are very few early stage permanent positions available (e.g., lectureships); 
2. if there are some available, they often require moving to a new city, which 10-years-post-PhD can be an issue for many of us regarding family arrangements;
   
   and the most depressing part:


3. working conditions in higher education in the UK are getting so bad (see the other blog posts and the reasons for our strike) that, after witnessing my friends and colleagues making this step, I am now seriously doubting if it is all worth it. It’s not exactly a great feeling having studied for years, worked (both research and unpaid teaching) for fixed-term contracts, and then to end up in an open plan office (in a “call centre”-type environment) constantly having to justify your “value for money”. 

This is why I am striking today and standing out in the cold with my colleagues. We did not sign up for this and this situation needs to change. Universities should not be money-making business ventures - they should be working for students and staff.

What I would be doing if I weren't striking

This is the first part in our series on how academic staff spend their time. Throughout the strike, we'll report from the frontline of unsustainable workloads. Have you ever wondered what a lecturer, a postdoc, a teaching fellow does outside of the classroom? Read on to find out...

The list of what I haven't done feels longer

Having gone to bed last night at some point after 1 am (I was up late drafting a new paper), I'm up at 7 to start a new day. I glance through the newspaper headlines on my phone, jump in the shower and then sit down to some breakfast and emails. I spend a lot of my time dealing with emails. Today I have questions from students, a request for a letter of reference, agendas for meetings I have to attend, a new assignment to mark, and a whole lot of irrelevant junk. I deal with what I can and leave the rest for later - I have to glance through my lecture one more time before I'm out the door at 8:15.

I teach from 9 am until 11 am. I'm tired and my brain feels a bit slow, but I hope I get my point across. Some students look happy with the material, but others look decidedly confused - a pretty standard lecture! Afterwards, I spend about 15 minutes answering questions before running off to my first meeting of the day.

A student feels they are struggling in my class, and has asked to meet with me. I'm always happy to receive these requests - I love my subject area, and enjoy helping other people appreciate it too. We chat a bit about how the student is feeling and work through some problems together. At the end of the meeting, I think we've cleared up some issues, but I always feel like I could have helped more.

It's 12:15 and I check my emails again - more questions, more meetings, more junk. I fire off a couple of answers and then run to my next meeting.

A colleague from another department wants to hear about my experience collecting data, and is asking for my advice. I don't feel qualified to give anyone advice about anything! I am very much a sufferer of imposter syndrome. We have a nice chat and a cup of coffee, but I'm again left feeling like I could have helped more than I did.

At 2 pm I have a meeting with members of the department. I had been hoping to get some lunch before this meeting but ran out of time. With stomach grumbling, I listen to updates on UCL bureaucracy and the department's attempts to do good work despite it. Some updates are promising, but most will inevitably lead to more work: more boxes to check, more meetings to attend, and less time for research and teaching.

Late for my next meeting at 3, I rush back to my office and open up Skype. I'm meeting with a colleague in another department about a paper we're working on together. Unfortunately, neither of us has had much time to look at the data, and our deadline is coming up. We update each other briefly on what we've read, what we've written, and what we intend to write before the next time we meet, and we reassure each other that if we put in a few extra hours over the weekend we'll be in a better position next week. Then they have to go for their own departmental meeting.

It's 4 pm and time for lunch. I eat while going over my emails. I try to delete what I don't need, but am still left with over 30 that need answering. For about an hour and a half, I answer these, and do some Moodle admin (updating lecture slides, posting a new assignment, answering a few questions...). I know I've made progress, but these kinds of tasks feel never-ending. At 5:30 I decide to head home, but end up chatting with a colleague and generally putting off heading out into the cold and dark.

I'm home by 7 and am faced with a dilemma: do I get a start on my marking, or do I try to make some progress on the paper I'm working on? I decide that I don't quite feel up to the marking, so I read over what my colleague and I have written so far, and heat up some leftovers for dinner. (Note to self: need groceries!) After a while, it's clear I'm not going to make any more progress tonight, so I check back to my email. This was a mistake: I find more emails to answer, but don't have the energy to do so. Around 9 I decide to call it a day (well, maybe one more email...), and spend the rest of the evening on Netflix and the Guardian feeling like I should be working.

Objectively, I know I've been busy all day, and I know that I've done a lot. But the list of what I haven't done feels longer: marking, prepping my next class, finishing the article that's been sitting in my drafts folder for weeks, cleaning my bathroom, answering that text from an old friend... I constantly feel like the tide of 'to-do's is on the verge of sweeping me out to sea, and it's only by swimming as hard as I can against it that I'm able to stay within sight of the shore.

Right now it doesn't feel like things are going to get a lot better. That's one of the reasons I'm striking: these workloads are unsustainable, and they are going to push dedicated, able people like me away from working at a university. I can only hope that universities listen to their staff, and do what they can to allow us to work more effectively and more healthily.

Thank you, students!

We're three days in to the strike and we are simply overwhelmed with your support.

Students across UCL are supporting striking UCU workers, as evidenced by this open letter from Laws students, this mass rally, and this interview on Sky News.

But we think Chandler House students are the best. You've been bringing us coffee and baked goods. You've come down to the picket line to have a chat with us. You've been attending our Strike School events in numbers. You've been emailing the Provost. And you've been absolute stars in choosing not to cross the picket line.

We really appreciate each show of support. It's what keeps our hearts warm on the cold, wet picket line!

And there is even more good news: your support is making a real difference. After just two days of action, UCEA (the body that represents UL universities) agreed to consult with their members regarding casualisation, pay gaps and unsustainable workloads. Unfortunately, they are still unwilling to discuss our 20% real-terms fall in pay over the last decade. There's also no word from UUK (the body governing our pension scheme) that they intend to listen to us. That just means we need to shout louder!

Momentum is growing in this dispute, and our spirits are high. There are five more days of action, including teach-outs across UCL, the march for Planet, Pay & Pensions, and a day of joint strike action with our colleagues in IWGB on the 4th of December.

We are so excited to stand together with UCL's security, portering and cleaning staff in their fight to be brought in-house. Unlike us staid UCU staff, we've been warned that IWGB members know how to party! Here they are teaching us a lesson this morning:

Solidarity with @CHonStrike!@iwgbucl cleaners have your back!

Outsourced members and UCU academic and support staff are ready to strike together on 4th December!👊✊

Join us! pic.twitter.com/pD8YpQi8jt

— UCL-End Outsourcing!✊ (@iwgbucl) November 27, 2019

Make sure you come out on the 4th to support all striking staff, and get ready to make some noise!

Finally, we know student budgets are more stretched than ever, but if you possibly can we'd like to ask you to donate to UCU's fighting fund, and (especially) to IWGB's fighting fund. Fighting funds support striking workers, including by providing them with some strike pay, as strikers would otherwise be completely without pay for the time they are on strike (and possibly while participating in action short of a strike as well).

Thank you once again for all of your support!

Case study: Trickle down economics

We asked striking staff members to tell us about their personal experiences of how the themes of the strike have affected them. Below, we hear from someone who teaches on a temporary part-time basis, which is especially common for people in the first few years after their PhD. Temporary and part-time lecturers often would like to move in to full-time permanent academic employment, but such jobs are extremely hard to come by due to the increase in casualisation in the UK higher education sector. Insecurity and lack of prospects force many bright, able people out of academia.

Part-time lecturers often have to take whatever work they are offered

The following experience left me angry and depressed, as it shows how part-time and temporary staff can be very badly treated by universities.

A two year position became available at another London college (not UCL). The position was to provide cover for a full time member of staff who had won research funding.

I was contacted by the head of the department about this position, and after discussing what was involved I asked about how much I would be paid. The answer was that I would be paid individually for each module taught, with the total pay for one year being about £9000. So over the two years, I would earn £18000. What I did not know during this conversation was that the college had been given around £100000 by the research funding body to cover the two years teaching. In other words, they intended to pay me just a fraction (less than 1/5) of the money that they had been given for the replacement teaching.

This reveals an attitude that can only be described as scandalous and contemptible. Part-time temporary staff, such as myself, work in situations of insecurity and financial uncertainty. The department in question wanted to take advantage of this, keeping most of the research money for itself, knowing that part-time lecturers often have to take whatever work they are offered. They showed no interest in supporting my academic career. Incidents like this do not happen in a vacuum. (I did not take up the position, and in the end the college was pressured by the funding body to change its offer.)

Case study: Zero-hours contracts

We asked strikers to tell us about their personal experiences of how the themes of the strike have affected them. Below, we hear from someone affected by casualisation, who is employed to teach on a zero-hours contract. Decisions taken at various levels of the university have made zero-hours contracts the easiest way for departments to employ people teaching on a non-permanent basis, and use of these contracts has soared in recent years. Many of your PGTAs, and some of your lecturers, are employed on such contracts.

I had no desk and no access to the computer system

When I started working on a zero-hour contract, I had no desk and no access to the computer system, printing or copying facilities, which were absolutely necessary for me to do my job, as I had to put together and print out handouts for most of my classes. Moreover, some of the classes required access to computers. As a result, I had to use the desk and the passwords for computers, printers and copiers that a PhD student kindly shared with me. However, one day an email was sent out with a warning that passwords should not be shared with anyone, after which I could no longer use the student’s details. It was a colleague at the department who eventually helped me get my own access to computers and printers/copiers.

As I had no desk, I had to meet with students in common spaces, which was not optimal as there were other people around us talking loudly and distracting us. After teaching for one term, I was offered by a colleague to share an office with them, which had a free desk. This was a great improvement. However, as my name was not displayed next to the office door, students had problems finding me. Part of my job was to meet with students and guide them in their preparation for presentations, which added to their overall grade. I did my best to inform the students which room I was using. However, the students still had problems finding me, as they were searching for an office with my name on (as they would normally do).


During a term break, I went to the office I was using to collect some of my books only to discover that someone else was already using my desk, with all of my stuff displaced. When I asked around what was going on, I was told that the desk was now being used by someone on a proper [non-zero hours] contract. I was told that because there were several people now working on proper contracts at the department, there was no room for someone like me and that I could only use a hotdesk that was there to be shared by me and four other people in the same position as me. Actually, this was more than what the department had to do: only employees of UCL are entitled to desk space, and zero-hours contract workers aren't entitled to any space at all. None of the above made it easy for me to do my job and was also morally discouraging. Everyone at the department - academic and administrative staff - have been helpful and supportive, but obviously they are not the ones who can or should sort out the problems created by the use of zero-hours contracts.

What are we hoping to accomplish?

You might agree with UCU that casualisation, falling pay, unsustainable workloads, pay inequality, and rising pension costs are bad, but maybe you think there's not much to be done about them. Isn't life getting harder for everyone? And how exactly are universities supposed to bring about change in areas like workloads or pay inequality?

In other words, what exactly does UCU want to change?

Firstly, UCU is asking UCEA, the body that represents universities in the UK, to sit down and have a grown-up conversation about what can actually be done. This morning at Bentham House, representatives from UCU and UCEA are meeting to talk about the Four Fights dispute. UCEA have said the talks are 'without pre-conditions'... except they refuse to talk about pay! If universities are not willing to talk about pay (including pay inequality for women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities, as well as falling real-terms pay), how do they expect to do anything about addressing these issues? If you want to ask employers this question, you can join the demonstration from 9:30 at the main entrance of Friends Meeting House (near Euston).

Here is the concrete action UCU is asking for on each of the issues:

• Pensions: 'No detriment'. This means that any changes to the pension scheme should not result in higher costs to members, or in lower pension payments. We don't think this is asking for a lot!
• Casualisation: 'Stamp out casualisation.' Universities are insisting that casualisation is a local issue - i.e. an issue that affect each university differently. This clearly misses the bigger picture. However, UCU are engaging individual universities in the fight on casualisation. Their demands include ensuring that all hourly-paid teaching staff (which includes most of your PGTAs as well as some Teaching Fellows and other teaching staff) to be employed on a (non-zero-hours) contract. The problem of casualisation goes beyond teaching staff, and UCU are committed to ending the gig economy in higher education. Again, we don't think it's a lot to ask that staff at universities, where students are paying between £9250 and £34,660, should be entitled to benefits like sick pay and maternity leave. 
• Pay inequality: 'Equal pay for equal work.' What year is it? 1952? Oh no, wait, it's 2019 and women, people from BAME backgrounds and people with disabilities are still getting paid less than their white, male, able-bodied colleagues. UCU is calling for meaningful action on this disgraceful inequality. UCEA is not willing to talk about pay. 
• Unsustainable workloads: 'An end to occupational stress and bullying.' UCU wants all of the work we do - administrative, pastoral, teaching-related, supervisory, research-related - to be fairly counted, and for workloads to be managed in a fair way. The fact that universities including UCL are threatening to withhold 100% of pay for employees who are working to rule by working a standard 36.5 hour week demonstrates that they know it is impossible for us to complete our contracted tasks in that time. 
• Falling pay: 'A real-terms pay rise'. UCU is asking for a pay rise of RPI+3%, or a minimum increase of £3,349 (whichever is greater). This is to address the fact that, over the last decade, our pay has fallen by 20%. At the same time, average rents in London have risen by as much as 30%. But not everyone is worse off - university Vice-Chancellors' pay (including UCL Provost Michael Arthur) rose by 13% between 2009 and 2017. Students are paying more fees than ever - where is your money going? 

More detail on UCU's demands can be found in this document from UCU.

Maybe you agree that things should change, but think that all these demands will just cost too much? UCL's UCU branch have shown that addressing issues with the USS pension will leave plenty of money left over to address the other demands (follow the link to the slides). UUK are currently paying to devalue our pensions!

UCL UCU are not alone. The Guardian's recent editorial shows that universities can and should pay to fix these problems. UCU shows that universities' income, surpluses and reserves are rising. Even the Vice-Chancellor of Essex University agrees that universities can pay more!

We hope you agree that our demands are not unreasonable. If so, we'd ask you to show your support however you can. 

Case study: Casualisation

Welcome to our series on the personal stories of staff members in the department. You can follow this series with the tag 'your stories'. We'll be updating daily with more stories of why we're striking, so make sure you check back regularly.

We asked strikers to tell us about their personal experiences of how the five fights have affected them. Below, we hear from someone affected by casualisation, who fell between the cracks of several different zero-hours contracts. Decisions taken at various levels of the university have made zero-hours contracts the easiest way for departments to employ people teaching on a non-permanent basis, and use of these contracts has soared in recent years. Many of your PGTAs, and some of your lecturers, are employed on such contracts.

I constantly felt like a second class citizen

As a default, someone working at UCL on a zero-hours contract is not entitled to the following:

• a regular paycheque
• sick pay
• parental leave, including maternity leave
• card access to UCL buildings
• access to room-booking systems
• off-site access to library e-resources (e.g. journals, e-books)
• progression up the pay scales or redeployment opportunities
• access to the UCL software database, which allows staff members access to software for which UCL has bought licenses, including software that is crucial for research purposes

Additionally, there are often problems accessing the holiday pay to which they are legally entitled (because each department manages holiday pay for zero-hours workers differently), and the way that UCL manages pensions essentially makes it impossible for someone on an irregular zero-hours contract to qualify to be enrolled in the pension scheme.

In order to make ends meet, I took a few different positions at UCL, each of which was managed through a separate zero-hours contract. Some of these contracts paid monthly, while others paid twice a year. Imagine only receiving a paycheque twice a year! This situation meant that I had to spend many (unpaid) hours each month, just checking that I was getting paid for the work I had done and for the holiday pay to which I was entitled. This task is made more complicated because UCL pays one month in arrears, so I would have to work out at the beginning of, say, May whether I had gotten paid for the work I did in March. Mistakes often happened: when I didn't get paid enough, I had to check the following month that the shortfall had been paid on top of what I would normally have gotten, and when I got paid too much, UCL would claw it back by paying me less the following month. This financial uncertainty meant that I had to put several life decisions on hold, because I didn't know whether I would have the cashflow to, say, move house or attend a friend's wedding. 

Additionally, I constantly felt like a second class citizen. One day, on my way in to teach a lecture, my ID card stopped letting me in to buildings. It turned out that my visitor access had lapsed. This would not have happened to someone on an employment contract. The truth hit me that, despite the fact that I was teaching classes, UCL still considered me only a 'visitor' - not a part of the academic community. I also had problems with library access for the same reasons. The department was able to help me work around these problems, but the problems were a constant reminder that I didn't belong at UCL, and it made me feel that my contributions were not as valued as someone with a non-zero-hours contract. 

The fact is that I shouldn't have to rely on the help of sympathetic faculty, admin, library, finance AND security staff in order to do the job that UCL needs me to do and to get fairly remunerated for it. The fact that I personally was able to find a way around these problems does not mean that the situation is acceptable: people who are less informed about their rights, and less able to push for those rights, are currently being exploited throughout UCL. We need to fight back against the rise in casualisation, and push for an end to zero-hours contracts for teaching staff at universities. That's why I'm striking. 

And we're off!

We were hoping it wouldn't come to this, but here we go. UCU at UCL and 59 other universities across the country are now officially on strike. You can read more about what this means for you, and how to support us elsewhere on the blog.

If you have to cross the picket line between now and the end of the day on Dec. 4th, make sure you give your lecturers a wave and tell them you're supporting them.

If you won't be crossing the picket line, you are welcome to join picketing staff members outside of Chandler House between 8 am and 12 pm every day. We also hope to see you at our Strike School - make sure you bring a phone or tablet with 3/4G (or a laptop with the material already downloaded), so you can access talk slides and other materials! The first talk's slides are already up.

To keep up to date with strike news and stories, check the blog regularly, keep an eye on your UCL email, and follow us on Twitter (@CHonStrike).

Two more reminders: 1) don't forget to register to vote if you're eligible - you have one day left, and 2) keep emailing UCL Provost Michael Arthur to let him know that you support striking workers.

Finally, we know it's not very British to talk about money, but if you want to donate to a good cause, you can donate to UCU's fighting fund, and/or to IWGB's fighting fund. Fighting funds support striking workers, including by providing them with some strike pay, as strikers would otherwise be completely without pay for the time they are on strike (and possibly while participating in action short of a strike as well).