[WILLITS] Hello and welcome to HRER 501 with an emphasis on employment law in the United States.
Employment law is often at the heart of what we do in human resource management. It helps us understand the programs and services that we need to offer in our organization, and it helps us understand how to make sure that the programs and the services that we offer are within the parameters of the law.
Law forms the basis of much of what we do. Understanding the law, understanding the cases that interpret the law will be important to us.
The assumption is that we do not have a legal background as we begin studying in this course. There are some who will have had a legal background. That is going to allow us to blend the understanding of those who do not have the legal background with those who do have that background. Challenging each other, asking questions of each other, putting our ideas together in group activities will give us an opportunity to engage in employment law and really, feel comfortable in reading cases and applying those cases in our future career.
With that in mind, it's going to be important that we understand definitions. It is important that we know key cases and their ramifications on the history and the future of human resource management. It also imperative that we understand the legal tenants with which we are working. So, we're going to start with the basics. We're going to start to understand how to read the cases and understand the implications of the cases. And then we're going to get into some of the innuendo of the case. So as we work through our various activities in the course, some of those activities will be individual. Others of those activities will be group. But in all of those activities, we need to remember that as we respond, we respond in the basic and then we take those basics to application. So that we can actually practice the application in a safe environment during this course.
A typical lesson in this course will have at its beginning, a video with some practitioners; some who have had legal background, others who have not, talking about key issues, key employment issues for that lesson. Then we'll have the opportunity to read the assignment, an opportunity to quiz ourselves to make sure we understand the basics of that particular lesson, and then we will go into either individual or group assignments for each of those lessons.
There will be opportunities for us to explore even further and bring together numerous aspects of employment law through papers, through book reports as a possibility, and through other opportunities to understand employment law. At the end there is an exam. And let me tell you right now, it's an open book exam. And the whole purpose of that exam is to bring the course together for ourselves. To start from the beginning and work our way through so that by the end of the course, we actually understand what is the relevance of employment law to us in human resource management and how do we apply it.
So I hope that you enjoy the course-- the basics, the innuendos and the opportunity to meet with your colleagues online, to share ideas, share questions, and in the end, bring to human resource management an even stronger opportunity for us to present to our organizations programs and services that will stand the test of time within our legal parameters.