Responsible academic assessment is an essential yet underexamined component of educating responsible professionals. Universities rely on assessment committees to make high-stakes decisions about hiring, promotion, and recognition, yet committee members often receive little formal preparation to navigate the ethical, psychological, and organizational complexities inherent in these processes. To address this gap, we developed Responsible Academic Assessments - From Principles to Practice, a tailormade, evidence-based training program now mandated for all assessment committee members at Eindhoven University of Technology. On June 24th, our workshop introduces both the training (including a role-playing game) and the iterative development process behind it, showing how an educational innovation grounded in applied social psychology, ethics, and research integrity can meaningfully shape responsible professional behavior. You can still register to participate!
The session speaks directly to the conference theme, Shaping the Future: Educating Responsible Professionals, by demonstrating how targeted competence-building - knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavioral insight - can strengthen ethical decision-making in academic assessment. Assessment committees operate within social and institutional dynamics that may elicit implicit biases, role pressures, group processes, and value conflicts. By combining research-informed principles with interactive and gamified pedagogical methods, our training supports professionals in developing the moral sensitivity, contextual awareness, and reflective judgement required for responsible conduct.
The central part of the session is an immersive experience of our role playing game, Behind Closed Doors: The Academic Assessment Game. Participants adopt roles such as candidate, HR advisor, committee member, or observer, and engage in the simulated deliberations of an assessment committee. This interactive format makes psychological and ethical challenges tangible: conflicting evaluation criteria, fairness dilemmas, interpersonal dynamics, organizational expectations, and the tension between explicit rules and implicit norms. Through experiential learning, participants gain insight into the lived complexities that shaped our training design, as well as the competences committee members need for responsible academic assessment.
Participants will learn (1) how the training was developed through needs assessment, expert consultation, and alignment with institutional goals; (2) how empirical evidence from observational and interview studies as well as social psychology and ethics education informed the design of scenarios, discussion prompts, and reflective exercises; and (3) how gamification and role play can be used to build ethical and professional competences in RCR related domains. By engaging with the game and subsequent reflection, participants will experience firsthand the dilemmas, vulnerabilities, and learning needs that motivated the creation of this training.
Session script: 15 minute introduction to the project; 90 minutes of setup and gameplay; 30 minutes of structured reflection and group discussion; 15 minutes presenting and discussing the broader training (including other modules); and 30 minutes for open Q&A and ideation on co-creating similar trainings to meet the needs of participants.
By combining institutional relevance, scientific grounding, and experiential pedagogy, this pre conference session offers a practical and innovative model for preparing assessment committees - and similar professional bodies - to act with responsibility, transparency, and integrity.