The “Negotiation in the News” (NITN) assignment is designed to enhance student negotiation skills through analysis of real-world negotiations and, in doing so, to address specific pedagogical limitations of traditional role plays and case studies. In the NITN assignment, which takes place over several weeks or months, student groups select, monitor, and analyze ongoing negotiations reported in the media. Through this process, students learn to recognize organic real-world negotiations, proactively gather and interpret relevant data, analyze dynamic negotiation processes as they unfold in real time, and assess the impact of complex contextual factors. We describe the design and implementation of the NITN assignment, illustrate examples from student projects, and present assessment data demonstrating its effectiveness in improving negotiation competencies.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has forced many organizations to negotiate existential issues in the context of diminished resources, high stress, heightened uncertainty, and lack of relevant precedent. A predictive approach—in which negotiators conduct research, prepare a strategy, and then act—may be insufficient in these turbulent pandemic conditions. Yet these are the very conditions in which nascent entrepreneurs typically negotiate. We recommend that organizations apply lessons from the start‐up venture context when negotiating during the pandemic: (1) recognize and tap into existing resources; (2) address conflicts directly and early, seeking stakeholder input; and (3) shift from the typical “predictive” negotiation approach to a more entrepreneurial “creative” approach, in which they take experimental action, learn from that experiment, and then plan their next steps.

Most negotiation students — and their instructors — aspire to develop negotiation skills that they can transfer to real-world contexts beyond the classroom. Instructors can maximize the likelihood of long-term learning through transfer-oriented curriculum design. Curriculum design elements likely to support lasting and flexible learning include (1) articulation of clear, performance-oriented goals; (2) careful selection of a range of learning activities tailored toward those goals, including activities that promote schema development and adjustment, activities that promote behavioral skill development, and activities that reinforce explicit theoretical understanding; (3) provision of multiple opportunities for constructive feedback from a variety of sources; and (4) the facilitation of self-reflection and metacognition.

There is a world of difference between teaching negotiation theory, which pertains to conceptual understanding, and teaching negotiation skills, which pertain to actual behavior in real‐world situations. The principle of reflective practice is widely used for theoretical instruction. Deliberate practice, however, is a more powerful model for skills training. Cognitive scientists have discovered that subjects will learn skills best when they perform well‐defined tasks at appropriate levels of difficulty, and when they are given immediate feedback, an opportunity to correct their errors, and an opportunity to practice until the tasks become routine. To satisfy the deliberate practice conditions for large graduate‐level negotiation courses (some as large as seventy students), students were assigned to use webcams with their laptop computers to video record their negotiation exercises. Before each exercise, students were assigned to prepare for and to concentrate on performing two or three well‐defined tasks. Students reviewed these recordings and commented on their performances in a journal before uploading the videos and journals to an assigned network folder. The instructor and teaching assistants then reviewed the journals and specified portions of the videos and provided individual written feedback to the students. The instructors found that student negotiating skills have improved significantly using this new system. In comparison with earlier semesters, students also felt they were involved in a more intense and personal learning experience. A majority of students reported they intend to apply the principles of deliberate practice in their professional lives after graduation. The authors have found this method continues to challenge their ability to identify and describe the skills used by expert negotiators. As an addition to this new methodology, two of the authors have spearheaded the development of video annotation software, known as “MediaNotes,” to help students and instructors review, comment upon, and learn from video recordings of negotiations. Based on their experiences using the software to support deliberate practice, the authors expect this tool to initiate a significant advance in our ability to recognize and describe expert negotiation behavior and in students’ ability to improve their negotiating skills.

A leading theory of human development — constructive‐developmental theory — posits that people make meaning in qualitatively different ways through the course of their lives and that their meaning‐making capacities continue to evolve even in adulthood. This article begins with a brief introduction to constructive‐developmental theory, including its roots in Jean Piaget's work on child development and Robert Kegan's more recent work on adult development. The author then explores the different ways in which students at different developmental stages might make sense of the same negotiation concepts. The article discusses some implications of these diverse understandings for negotiation teachers in terms of goal setting, evaluation, teaching methods, and transformational learning. It then concludes with a suggestion for more research on the connections between constructive–developmentalism and negotiation pedagogy.