Digitial Humanities section holds appreciation event for TAs

The event, aptly named “TAs Rule the School”, celebrated the impact that TAs have on teaching at CDH. It included a ceremony to recognize and thank all the people who were involved in teaching during the 2023/24 academic year, be it traditional in-class teaching or supervising students projects in the labs. Certificates were handed out by the Dean of the College of Humanities Prof. Frédéric Kaplan and DH Section Director Prof. Daniel Gatica-Perez. The ceremony concluded with a casual get together including the DH Master’s students and other colleagues from the DH labs and research groups.

There are nine DH classes each year. In the 2023/24 academic year, these classes had over 260 students. Most of the DH classes are project-based learning classes with group work, maximizing project ownership and peer interaction for the students, and requiring serious investment from the TAs to assist professors in helping the students approach these projects with a research-minded methodology.

The Digital Humanities labs and groups also supervise bachelor’s and master’s students semester projects from many other EPFL sections such as computer science, data science, sustainable management & technology or microengineering among others. In 2023/24, they supervised more than 40 projects in DH. Semester projects allow students to discover the world of research while working on a substantial project ranging from 6 to 12 credits depending on their study plan. This requires a heavy investment of time and attention from the TAs who supervise them. The other projects that are supervised by DH labs and groups are master’s thesis projects. Students do these either over a four-month period, during which they work full time in the lab and go deep into a given research area, or by working in a company for six months while doing a research project for the company, supervised by the DH labs.