Mediation Program (Pre-Pay Discount 10%)

This course provides a deep dive into the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution across workplace, community, and legal contexts. Students will examine major negotiation models—including positional bargaining and interest-based negotiation frameworks—while learning how to select the right approach for different settings. Through interactive case studies, simulations, and role plays, students will practice strategies for resolving disputes, managing power dynamics, and achieving durable agreements. Emphasis is placed on developing negotiation strategies that preserve relationships, foster collaboration, and balance advocacy with problem-solving.  

Learning Outcomes  

This course equips students with practical negotiation and dispute resolution strategies that can be applied across workplace, community, and legal contexts. Students will develop and strengthen skills in distributive and integrative negotiation models, while learning to analyze disputes, manage power dynamics, and adapt to cultural and structural complexities. Through case studies, role plays, and simulations, participants will strengthen their ability to prepare for and conduct negotiations that preserve relationships, create value, and achieve durable agreements.  

• Analyze conflicts and diagnose negotiations accurately, including the role of interests, positions, values, power, and culture.  
• Differentiate among key negotiation models (distributive/positional, integrative/interest-based, and multiparty negotiation) and identify their strengths and limitations.  
• Strategically prepare for negotiations to maximize effective engagement in and evaluation of negotiations in a variety of contexts. 
• Demonstrate effective negotiation skills, including clearly communicating under pressure, active listening, framing, questioning, option generation, concession management, and moving past impasse.  
• Navigate difficult dynamics, such as high emotion, power imbalances, and cross-cultural differences. 
• Integrate negotiation and dispute resolution strategies with facilitation techniques, understanding when and how to shift roles between negotiator and neutral facilitator.  
• Manage and navigate complex negotiations with multiple stakeholders and in complex systems. 

Skills You Will Gain

• Strategies for resolving disputes
• Managing power dynamics
• Achieving durable agreements

Who Should Enroll in this Course

• Potential or practicing mediators
• Professionals: Lawyers, managers, therapists, social workers, planners, teachers, real-estate agents
• People who must work collaboratively with other parties while negotiating solutions to complex problems

Course Format and Pacing

This is an online remote learning course delivered through UC Davis CPE’s learning management system, Canvas, with supplemental live sessions hosted on Zoom. The course consists of approximately 20 hours of content, combining pre-recorded lectures with mandatory live Zoom sessions led by the instructor(s).

This course provides a rigorous foundation for understanding conflict as a human meaning-making process that unfolds across multiple levels: the inner frontier of identity, emotion, and cognition; the outer frontier of culture, power, and structural conditions, and the meeting point where the interpersonal frontier and outer forces collide through communication. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from conflict resolution, psychology, communication, and systems theory, the course emphasizes analytic understanding and communication as tool.  

Students examine how conflicts emerge, escalate, and persist within individuals, between people, and within organizations and societies. Particular attention is given to the roles of identity, emotion, moral reasoning, and culture in shaping conflict dynamics, as well as to the ways communication both reflects and amplifies these forces. The course prepares students for subsequent training in negotiation and mediation by developing deep conflict literacy, reflective self-awareness, and the capacity to analyze conflict across micro, meso, and macro levels. 

Learning Outcomes  

• Conceptualize conflict as a multi-level process involving intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural dynamics. 
• Analyze how identity, values, emotion, and cognition shape conflict behavior and meaning-making. 
• Examine how communication functions as the primary medium through which conflict is expressed, misunderstood, and escalated. 
• Identify the influence of culture, power, and institutional structures on conflict interactions. 
• Develop reflective awareness of their own conflict orientations, triggers, and interpretive habits. 
• Apply diagnostic frameworks to assess conflict dynamics prior to negotiation or mediation intervention. 
• Understand communication as a tool that can be used for both conflict escalation and conflict transformation. 

Skills You Will Gain

• Deep conflict literacy
• Reflective self-awareness
• Capacity to analyze conflict across micro, meso, and macro levels

Who Should Enroll in this Course

• Potential or practicing mediators
• Professionals: Lawyers, managers, therapists, social workers, planners, teachers, real-estate agents
• People who must work collaboratively with other parties while negotiation solutions to complex problems

Course Format and Pacing
This is an online remote learning course delivered through UC Davis CPE’s learning management system, Canvas, with supplemental live sessions hosted on Zoom. The course consists of approximately 20 hours of content, combining pre-recorded lectures with mandatory live Zoom sessions led by the instructor(s).

Demand for skilled mediators is growing rapidly across industries as organizations seek cost-effective, efficient approaches to conflict resolution. Designed for professionals who regularly navigate conflict—including facilitators, HR practitioners, attorneys, paralegals, coaches, social workers and leaders—this course provides a framework for mediation theory, process and professional practice at a professional level.

You’ll develop core competencies in conflict analysis, communication, negotiation and ethical decision making, with emphasis on facilitative mediation, interest-based negotiation, cultural awareness and reflective practice. Through hands-on learning, including structured role plays, real-world simulations, reflective debriefs and skills practice, you’ll build the capacity to effectively convene parties, manage the mediation process and facilitate constructive dialogue in both formal and informal settings.

The course also introduces the Dispute Resolution Programs Act (DRPA) procedural requirements, including intake, documentation, agreement writing and record keeping. By the end of the course, you’ll be prepared to competently and ethically serve as an entry-level mediator in community and court-connected contexts and meet the training requirements for mediator certification under the California Dispute Resolution Programs Act.

Learning Outcomes

• Conduct the facilitative mediation process between conflicting parties
• Assess the appropriateness of mediation for a given conflict, including identifying ethical considerations, power dynamics and legal constraints
• Facilitate interest-based negotiation and consensus building to identify underlying interests, generate options, evaluate alternatives and work through impasse

Skills You will Gain

• Mediation communication skills, including active and empathetic listening, reframing, questioning, responding to emotion and managing difficult interactions
• Mastery of conducting facilitative mediation processes in alignment with recognized professional and ethical standards, including intake, convening, process design and development of clear and durable agreements

Course Format and Pacing
This is an online remote learning course delivered through UC Davis CPE’s learning management system, Canvas, with supplemental live sessions hosted on Zoom. The course consists of approximately 40 hours of content, combining pre-recorded lectures with mandatory live Zoom sessions led by the instructor(s).