Hello and welcome everyone uh to the mediation certificate course. My name is Joe Reyes. I will be your instructor. I could be reached online at the platform uh via instant messaging or if you would like, you can email me that email is J Reyes at Lakewood dot E D U. That's J R E Y E S at Lakewood dot E D U. I'm really glad to be here and really excited to start this journey with you folks over the next couple of weeks, we're gonna be looking at mediation and conflict resolution. We're gonna dive into the skills needed to be an effective mediator and we're gonna look at ways to give you effective tools that will not only help you for the rest of this course and be successful and what will help you in the mediation field within your careers and with your pursuit of your ultimate goals. Right over the next few weeks, we're gonna dive in to mediation, not only what it is to mediate and how to resolve conflict effectively, but we'll talk a little bit about negotiation stages. We'll talk about conflict management, we'll talk about listening skills and our communication skills. When we have parties that may be at a heightened level of uh mixed emotions, we're gonna learn how to draft these mediate agreements and ultimately come to an understanding of what it is to be an effective mediator and to have an effective practice. So a couple of things that I'd like for you as effective learners and motivated learners is to read the syllabus, read the outline and understand each lesson as we progress further. Um Think of them as building blocks. Uh Lesson one is gonna help you with lesson two, lesson two with 34 and so forth. And so on. One of the biggest things that I could stress is to set time, set a schedule for your studies. Um I know this is an online environment. I know the flexibility of it all is what we both are all looking at, right? But one of the things is set a schedule of your time where you're gonna be doing your readings and your homework and try to adhere to it, knock out one less than a week. If you could stay up on your studies, stay up on the the readings. It's only gonna help you not only retain the information, but it will help you to learn it and to get those building blocks more effectively when it comes to your final exams and then ultimately your graduation
