Anyone who trains mediators is always on the lookout for good videos for training or teaching purposes. They’re tough to come by. Finding free videos is even harder.

Thanks to the efforts of Professor James Coben of Hamline University School of Law Dispute Resolution Institute, 20 videos depicting mediation in litigation contexts are available for downloading, all at no cost. (Some of you may remember that Professor Coben is also the author of one of my favorite articles on mediation, in part because of its great title, “Gollum, Meet Sméagol: A Schizophrenic Rumination on Mediator Values Beyond Self Determination and Neutrality” (PDF), discussed here in a post from last year.)

All that Professor Coben, who produced these videos, asks in return is that you notify him if you’re using the videos and let him know the context, and of course to provide proper attribution before showing them. A very small price to pay indeed.

Some of the videos are better than others, and downloading should definitely not be attempted without a high-speed internet connection. What makes some of these vignettes especially fun are the deliberate mistakes here and there you’ll see the actor-mediators make–lots of food for thought and discussion here.

Thanks to my colleague and friend, Melinda Gehris, for the link.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Cool or Fun Stuff on the Web, Mediation Training, Mediation in Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.