Practice what you preach: Designing student assignments that advance open and reproducible science

Since the replication crisis came to widespread attention in psychology, there has beensignificant progress in reforming research practices to be more open and reproducible.However, the integration of these principles into teaching—particularly assessment—haslagged behind. While many open educational resources (OERs) have been developed tosupport the teaching of open science, fewer efforts have focused on embedding openscience into how students are assessed. This tutorial addresses that gap by offering a seriesof practical, scalable strategies for integrating open and reproducible science intopsychology education through assessment. We argue that to normalise open science,students must not only learn about its principles but be assessed on their understanding andapplication of them. Drawing on examples from our undergraduate and postgraduateprogrammes and the wider literature, we outline a range of assessment strategies alignedwith curriculum standards and pedagogical evidence. These include incorporatingpre-registration and registered reports, evaluating reproducibility through code and datasubmission, engaging students in peer review and code review, and integrating openscience concepts into essays, multiple-choice exams, and final dissertations. We highlightthat even small changes at the course level can promote open science, and that educatorsshould approach implementation flexibly, recognising it as a continuum rather than a binaryshift. Importantly, we also stress the need to avoid framing open science as overly technicalor inaccessible, which may discourage student engagement. By embedding open andreproducible practices into assessment design, educators can support the development ofcritical, ethical, and transparent future scientists. While the examples provided are drawnfrom psychology, the strategies are applicable to a wide range of data-driven disciplines.