DRLab (Dispute Resolution Lab) is a laboratory for innovation and research in collaborative management and Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems (ADR).

• Through this lab, it aims to articulate a discourse and a series of actions and activities around the concept of ADR, especially mediation and its teaching, while exploring new forms of collaborative work and knowledge production that do not emulate traditional practices. Through the laboratory, the activities of the Spanish, European and international institutions that participate in it relate to what happens outside the academic institutions in a common place that is intended to reflect the current reality of mediation, favoring the contrast of experiences with plurality and transparency.
• DRLab is configured as a space of commitment in which to debate on mediation with rigor, to produce consensus and make shared decisions; to point out discrepancies, disagreements, express problems and propose common initiatives. In this task, the Laboratory becomes a space where the process of production and reproduction of ideas has as attributes the tentative, experimental, and provisional nature of the generation of ideas, but with the active vocation of systematizing protocols of action such as those of good practices, those that allow the improvement of teaching guides, which represent an advance in the teaching of mediation at the University.

METHODOLOGY OF WORK IN DRLab

• We conceive the laboratory in the conceptual framework of the "culture of mediation" in teaching and learning processes where innovation is the strategic variable. At DRL we will work with an interdisciplinary and international model of innovation in education and training in conflict resolution through research, design and experimentation processes. As in any innovation laboratory, the imaginable future merges with the realizable future.
• Our first steps to move into the field of innovation was to adopt the concept of ecosystem to know the actors, resources, networks and dynamics and synergies of mediation education in Spain and surrounding countries. (The information collected will be contributed to the process of Design Thinking (DT)).
• The methodology we use in DRL is of group and participative design with interactions in multiple planes where the vertical and the horizontal are reconfigured. In the interaction process (synchronous, diachronic, face-to-face) is where creative ideas or initiatives are generated (creativity to produce new ideas) and at the same time useful and viable (innovation to apply them in a viable way). Therefore, we will not only generate creative ideas, but we will combine reflection and orientation for action: we reflect and act in the proximity with global awareness (mediation subject vs. mediation culture).
• We will use conversation and other group techniques to collaboratively build a didactic guide that contains what should be important and serve as a basis for all subjects and courses taught by Lab members. The activities we will carry out are designed to optimize talent, with clear lines of work and in a workspace transformed into a space of attention.
• With this methodology we want to build products such as applications (mediation app in your hand), transversal training activities (course to improve conflict management skills...), dissemination of research results, as well as construction and development of teaching guides and other teaching documents.
• The values on which DRLAB is based also mediate our work methodology:

 

- Openness

- Transparency

- Open communication

- Clarity

- Autonomy

- Digital culture

- Equality

- Ethics of care

- Horizontality, Collaboration, and co-creation

- Complexity

- Learning and documentation