Technology Aided Learning in Dispute Resolution and Evidence: Combining Video with Online Annotation/Discussion in a Blended Learning Design

The legal industry is expanding its use of technologies, which stimulates legal education practitioners to extend technology-enhanced learning opportunities. Law teachers can adopt innovative pedagogy to use the media of video to demonstrate dispute resolution skills such as negotiation/mediation and advocacy, supported by online discussion technology for granular analyses of skills demonstrated in the video. When teaching legal skills in two courses, Negotiation and Dispute Resolution (NDR) and Evidence, we argue that there is value in adopting a blended learning design that prepares students for practice through video and online annotation/discussion. The skills demonstrated by practitioners and built by students through this method offers scaffolds toward active student-generation of authentic legal capability (e.g. practice through role-play) and written artefacts (e.g. a file note and cross-examination questions). This article explores the use of granular video annotation/discussion and key considerations for law teaching when adopting a blended learning design. It outlines two examples and provides a road map of how to approach blended learning when using video annotation/discussion in the legal education context.