Designing Human Rights Subject Based on Students’ Need

Abstract

Human rights education (HRE) has been globally recognised as being of the utmost importance in the facilitation of social unity. Thus, the time has come for the Faculty of Law, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), to introduce HRE as part of the curriculum for its undergraduate students. Learner's needs and input must be taken into consideration before introducing new courses to ensure that the desired result is achieved. As such, an exploratory study was conducted by way of distributing questionnaires to a selected group of students in an effort to assess law students’ perceptions of human rights; and to determine whether or not they viewed an HRE course as relevant to their lives and ambitions. At the same time, the survey was also designed to determine the most preferred method of teaching the course. Most importantly, the results of the survey are utilised to determine whether the idea that HRE serves as an important means of promoting social unity is supported, or dismissed, by the opinions of the undergraduate student body of the Law Faculty at UKM.