The 4th Generation – Digital Human Rights course for the Helsinki University just ended.

The course was for me a first, an exploration on human rights directly related to the media and communication technologies, as well as supported by communication and tech.

One of the core learning objectives was to empower theories — and students — to work in practice. The philosophy behind this goal was the urgent, real-life need for communication and research expertise in the field; as well as the desire to give the students an opportunity to contribute, to help, to inspire, to enhance the work of organizations working on these issues. Theories can make a difference as applied in to the world, a scholar can make a difference in contributing his/her skills.

To stress these points, the final project was a question of choice: Either a scholarly paper or a consultancy project of sorts. (See the final project instructions here.)

Below are some examples of the final projects.

(There were many more great submissions – applied and scholarly work – but these final projects are by nature public = live online.)

• A series of 8 posts to inform a tech innovation-training organization about good practices in multi-stakeholder collaboration in the field of digital culture.
• A project to assist Meeri Koutaniemi Photographer in her new book and exhibitions.
• A project to discuss women’s rights, including cyberviolence (the blog will live on after the course so be sure to follow it).
• A series of blog posts to popularize HR/tech issues.

(My co-facilitator Rune Saugmann and I are in the process of writing a reflection of this experimental course, between theory and praxis.)