Great thread, Cat. One of my top examples of a horrendously "designed" academic process. The bias you mention is, of course, very real. Other biases: age, status (adjunct, full-time), reputation, prior experience (1st course w/prof, subsequent course), etc.

The entire ... https://twitter.com/inspiredcat/status/1349520350577651715

process was designed around lack of trust. Students don't trust profs (bad eval = bad grade) and profs don't trust students (eval calculated to achieve outcome - better grade, recommendation, etc. - other than targeted one - improved teaching).

So many probs: ...

1. One-time eval at end of course (may come after student has received interim feedback in the form of grades during semester),
2. Blind (no opportunity for discourse),
3. Untrained (students have no real objective framework for evals),
4. Limited time/interest (students ...

given 15 mins. during one of the last classes),
5. Devalued (students feel/know evals have little meaning or worse - e.g. negative evals unlikely to mean anything to "famous" researcher, could hurt pre-tenure prof),
6. Poor question design,
and the list goes on ...

Plus, this is an institutional process so very hard to change as the institution wants uniformity. (Similar to company once per year performance reviews - also bad.)

Plenty of research on how to do better: continuous rather than one-time, discourse rather than blind, etc. ...

Part of this, at least in grad school, stems from the mindset many have towards students. Rather than treating them as professionals many profs/institutions approach relationship from strong/weak. If the expectation from day 1 was: you are a professional, we will ...

treat you as such and have designed our process accordingly, you would (I think) get a better response (and be able to identify, correct, or guide out those who can't upgrade their behavior).

This would greatly help the prof. In-house, lawyers are notorious among HR depts ...

for being among the worst at giving performance feedback.

Of course, you need proper design as well, but changing the perspective/mindset would be my starting point. Though I suspect, Cat, that you are well ahead of the pack on treating students as professionals.