Using student evaluations fairly for early-career staff

A ten-point checklist for faculty boards, hiring panels and quality teams that review the teaching of PhD students, seminar tutors and lecturers on fixed-term contracts. It turns the bias and small-sample evidence into concrete rules: aggregate, add context, separate tutor from module, add non-rating evidence and avoid ranking. Use it when writing renewal guidance or assessing teaching in job applications. Koji can help supply the mid-term and qualitative evidence it calls for.

What's in this checklist

• Pool scores across modules and terms before judging a person
• Show the number of responses next to every mean
• Flag or suppress means below a minimum response count
• Report module type, class size, quantitative content and response rate
• Compare only tutors who taught the same module in the same term
• Ask section items only about what the tutor controls
• Add peer observation, a teaching statement and feedback samples
• Read open comments for patterns across many students
• Run a mid-term check that goes to the tutor and mentor only
• Use bands, not rankings, and never act on gaps of a few tenths