Behind Closed Doors: The Academic Assessment Game

Introduction & Purpose

Welcome to our short role-playing experience. In this session, participants will step into the shoes of a TU/e promotion or appointment committee (BAC) to experience - rather than just discuss - how academic assessment happens in practice.

The game is designed as a light and accessible way to explore what we’ve learned through our project: how processes, personalities, and policies interact when committees make decisions that shape academic careers.

 Through a short, structured scenario (min. 15 minutes), you will encounter real challenges that BAC members face: balancing criteria, managing time pressure, navigating group dynamics, and handling conflicts of interest - all while striving for fairness, collegiality, and quality.

This game was developed as part of research on academic assessment and institutional culture at TU/e.

All characters, dialogues, and scenarios in Behind Closed Doors: The Academic Assessment Game are entirely fictional. They were conceptually informed by aggregated research findings, anonymized interviews, and general observations of academic processes conducted as part of empirical studies at TU/e. No individual person, committee, or specific event is portrayed, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or to real situations is purely coincidental.