Best practices

This role-play exercise focuses both on putting various communication techniques into practice and using digital communication channels, and on the emotional experience of dealing with and coming to terms with a difficult situation.

This approach enhances students’ methodological skills by enabling them to engage in-depth with a particular method, apply it in practice and compare it with others.

This OER resource provides a practical framework for organising team meetings and group work. It contains tried-and-tested templates, methods and tips to help teams define clear objectives, allocate tasks efficiently and work together productively.

The idea for the course, which is a collaboration between the German and English language departments, arose from a desire to familiarise students with different native languages with the concept of language mediation, thereby developing and promoting an awareness of how to communicate and interact in a foreign language in a way that conveys the intended meaning and is tailored to the audience.

As part of the comprehensive review of the postgraduate, part-time, interdisciplinary Master’s programme in Mediation and Conflict Management – which has been running since 2003 – the introductory questionnaire presented here was distributed to students; it contains questions regarding both their initial motivation for studying and their perceptions of the newly developed learning and teaching formats and course modules. The questionnaire may serve as a source of inspiration for those responsible for continuing education programmes and may contribute to research into the motivations behind and the effects of mediation training.