San José, 1 November 2008 -- The University for Peace in San José, Costa Rica hosted HREA Director Felisa Tibbitts as a visiting professor for the Master of Arts in Peace Education program. She taught a three-week course, Human Rights Education, from 13-31 October 2008. Sixteen students learned about theory and tools and how to integrate human rights values, standards and the human rights-based approach into their work as peace educators.

It was a "blended" course, with the first half taking place online and the second half in person in San José. During the first half, students accessed theoretical readings and participated in online discussion forums and chats with the course instructor.

The second half of the course was practice-oriented, introducing a range of examples and tools for teaching human rights, such as planning a human rights education program, writing curriculum, addressing the overall learning environment, planning a presentation and carrying out an assessment.

Students developed final projects on topics that included integrating human rights within language learning, the development of curricular units on topics such as modern slavery, and the analysis of national and state curricular standards from a human rights perspective.

The course was highly valued by students and the University for Peace has asked Felisa to teach the course again next year.