The aim of the three-year project ‘Égalité de genre et transformation numérique’ (‘genre/numérique’), which will hold its first conference in Fribourg on 8-9 September, is twofold: to ensure that movements toward gender equality are supported in the digital domain, and to address gender bias in the development and deployment of digital technologies.

‘Genre/numérique’ is jointly led by the UNIL-EPFL dhCenter, the UNIL and EPFL equality offices, HES-SO (Haute École spécialisée de Suisse occidentale), HEG-FR (School Of Management Fribourg), and the StrukturELLE association, with support from Swissuniversities. It was initiated based on the recognition that issues related to gender equality and the digital transformation must be addressed in relation to one another, rather than separately – as is often the case.

“Our project notably aims to challenge digital biases, such as those developed or reinforced by algorithms, and to support equal access to positions of power in digital enterprises,” explains project team member Héloïse Schibler. She and the genre/numérique team are working on a video series that dives into deeper detail on key issues – such as gender balance and digital education, gender roles on dating apps, and gender bias on Wikipedia – with selected experts.

In addition to opening a transdisciplinary dialogue on these issues, the team plans to evaluate the effects of gender bias and digital transformation, study approaches to promoting gender equality using digital methods, and outline best practices for  supporting women in the digital sector.

Toward gender equality in the digital world?

Genre/numérique is organizing a cycle of three annual conferences, the first of which will be held on September 8-9 in Fribourg. Entitled “Toward gender equality in the digital world?” this event is free and open to all upon registration, and is aimed in particular at participants from academia, digital enterprise, media, and public policy.  This year, a special thematic focus will be placed on issues in digital entrepreneurship, such as women’s participation in and access to tech start-ups (view full program).

“Although there is a great need for these kinds of conversations, to my knowledge, this event is unique in the region. We will have diverse speakers touching on all digital domains, with emphasis on active, hands-on exchanges such as round tables, working group discussions, and networking sessions,” Schibler says.

The proceedings of this and the succeeding two conferences, which will cover themes ranging from digital ethics and public policy to education and training, will be used to develop and publish a white paper of best practices, with the goal of reinforcing the visibility of issues relating to gender and the digital, and offering solutions for a more inclusive digital world.

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dhCenter member Francesca Dell’Oro and the WoPoss team has recently published a sample of its annotated corpus for the study of the diachrony of modality in Latin, as well as a user-friendly interface to query it.

The SNSF-funded project, A world of possibilities. Modal pathways over an extra-long period of time: the diachrony of modality in the Latin language (WoPoss) is a digital humanities project formerly hosted by the Section des Sciences du langage et de l’information (Language and Information Science Section) of the University of Lausanne. It is also attached to the Institut des sciences du langage et de la communication (Language Science Insitute, ISLa) of the Université de Neuchâtel.

The project aims to to set up and annotate a balanced corpus of Latin texts from the 3rd century BC to the 7th century in order to study the evolution of lexical and morphological modal markers according to specific guidelines.

A sample of the annotated corpus is now available and the modal passages can be be queried at woposs.unine.ch/form.html. More annotated texts will be made available in the coming months.

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This article,  originally published on 18.08.22 by Anne-Muriel Brouet as part of EPFL’s Summer Series of articles on student projects, features the EPFL Critical Data Studies class taught by dhCenter members Charlotte Mazel-Cabassse and Semion Sidorenko.

Three university students, as part of their critical data studies class, wrote a light-hearted yet instructive comic strip about perception biases in the presentation of data.

The story starts with two artisan cheesemakers who are hauling their product to market when their carts – one horse-drawn, the other ox-drawn – collide. Raymonde, a 70-year-old woman who witnesses the collision, complains that accidents involving horse-drawn carts, unlike ox-drawn ones, are becoming more frequent. She goes on to back up her premise with pie charts showing the trend is getting worse every year. But Hugues, another bystander from the same age bracket, isn’t so easily convinced. He points out that Raymonde’s pie charts mask the fact that the number of overall accidents is decreasing and that there are fewer and fewer ox-drawn carts on the roads.

The story is told through a skillfully drawn comic strip that’s amusing and instructive at the same time. It was created by a group of three students – two from EPFL and one from the Lausanne School of Visual Arts (Ceruleum) – for their critical data studies class, given jointly by EPFL and UNIL. Nicole Vadot, one of the EPFL students, is pursuing a Master’s degree in physics and has a keen interest in data visualization. In the past few semesters, she has sought to perfect the graphs in her lab reports and has read up on methods for manipulating how data are presented. Zineb Agnaou, the other EPFL student, is pursuing a Master’s degree in applied mathematics; her areas of interest include statistics and techniques for presenting research findings. The Ceruleum student is Blandine Moulin, who “loves drawing little old grannies,” she says. As part of her Bachelor’s degree in illustration and comics, Moulin contributed her artistic talent and non-technical perspective to the project.

The students worked over weekends and school breaks to design three episodes of their comic strip, called AbraDatabra, along with a website https://actu.epfl.ch/news/do-we-have-an-unhealthy-appetite-for-pie-charts-2/(in French only) where it can be viewed online. “With our comic strip, we wanted to shed some light on how charts and graphs can be created and interpreted, so that research results are presented in the best way possible,” says Agnaou. Her colleague Vadot adds: “The idea is to provide tools that just about anyone can use to look more critically at data they’re presented with.” Drawing on equal doses of humor and pedagogy, the comic strip educates readers through examples ranging from toppled cheese carts and magic potions to electoral propaganda.

The group’s website provides details about the charts and graphs they use, whose open-source code is available on GitHub, along with descriptions of the traps to watch out for and tips to avoid getting duped. Such traps include using inverted scales, mixing up absolute and relative values, introducing extrapolation bias, drawing conclusions from small sample sizes, putting forth false correlations, using misleading slopes, omitting data points and excluding information. This all leads back to the key question put forth by the students: do we have an unhealthy appetite for pie (charts)?

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The College of Humanities Artist-in-Residence program (CDH AiR) ‘Enter the Hyper-Scientific’ has launched its 2023 call, which will support up to four artists for three months of research and experimentation connecting art, humanities, science, and technology. This year’s edition will see a new partnership with the City of Lausanne.

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The topic for the 2023 CROSS call is: crisis. Up to six grants of up to CHF 60,000 per project will be distributed.

Candidates are invited to apply on the CROSS website by August 25.

Technology to the rescue?

It seems that the word ‘crisis’ appears in media headlines almost daily, whether in reference to the climate and natural disasters, political conflict and humanitarian aid, digital security and privacy, finance and socioeconomics, or even our physical and mental health. When a problem is elevated to the status of a crisis, it is often due to both its extremity and its urgency, necessitating immediate decision-making and action.

Because crises often develop at the convergence of several different factors, an interdisciplinary approach helps to better understand why crises occur, and to develop solutions. The 2023 edition of the CROSS program therefore calls upon researchers at EPFL and the University of Lausanne to submit proposals for joint projects that bring the natural sciences and engineering together with the social sciences and humanities to address some of society’s most urgent challenges.

For example, how can different technologies be used for crisis management, and what are their limits? Do emerging technologies have the potential to create their own crises, and if so, how can we identify and avoid them? How have societies historically resolved crises, and how does this knowledge impact the crises that we are living – and creating – today?

A multi-disciplinary perspective is also key to perceiving the nature of crisis itself: how does a phenomenon go from being a problem to a crisis? How can the incremental nature of scientific research and innovation be reconciled with the urgency of a crisis? How are data and information – or disinformation – about crises produced and disseminated?

Deadline: 25 August 2022.
Notification of results: October 2022.
More information: https://go.epfl.ch/CROSS-2023-en
Contact: cross@epfl.ch

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Sarah Kenderdine, head of the Laboratory for Experimental Museology, is leading the digitization and valorization of the Panorama of the Battle of Murten – a 100 x 10-meter work created in 1893 by German panorama painter Louis Braun – in an undertaking that promises to yield one of the largest digital images ever produced.

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Whether it’s jazz recordings, concert footage, photographs or interviews, EPFL researchers are applying machine learning and digital museology techniques to archives of cultural data to achieve new artistic and creative experiences.

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The International Association for Visual Culture and the Journal of Visual Culture are inviting submissions for its Early Career Researcher Prize by November 1, 2022.

The Journal of Visual Culture is an international, refereed journal and is published three times a year – April, August and December – by SAGE Publications. The Journal welcomes provocative, innovative analyses of visual culture, especially those that challenge conventional categories or modes of inquiry. To address the broad interests of its readers, the Journal supports critically informed, original interpretations that both illuminate a specific phenomenon, and yield insights for social, political, philosophical or aesthetic concerns shaping global visual cultures.

For its Early Career Researcher Prize, current doctoral students and recent PhDs (within 5 years of degree) may submit original, unpublished essays of 5000 to 8000 words on any topic related to visual culture. The prize-winning essay/s will be considered for publication in the journal, pending revisions advised by the committee and the journal’s editorial collective.

Submission details:

In addition to an abstract of approximately 100 to 150 words and 5-8 keywords, submissions should include a brief biographical statement (approximately 200 words) indicating graduate institution, degree status, and current contact information. Manuscripts should be submitted in Word or Google Doc format as a single running document (abstract, keywords, biography, essay) by November 1, 2022 to VCEssayPrize@gmail.com. View further details on the IAVC website.

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Dans cet article du Courrier, publié le 13 juin, le membre du dhCenter Vincent Kaufmann et ses collègues du Laboratoire de sociologie urbaine de l’EPFL expliquent pourquoi les modèles de «quartiers durables» à haute densité développés à la fin du XXe siècle, pourtant étayés par des labels qualitatifs et autres processus «participatifs», ne répondent plus aux enjeux socio-environnementaux en cours.

Lire l’article: Le Courrier. “Refonder politiquement le territoire” (13 juin 2022). Vincent Kaufmann, Luca Pattaroni et Yves Pedrazzini. https://lecourrier.ch/2022/06/13/refonder-politiquement-le-territoire/

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Should students learn to program before they can write? Will we still have newspapers in 50 years? What will museums look like in the future? The inaugural DHdays at EPFL aim to celebrate the diversity of digital humanities innovations, while exploring emerging research questions at the intersection of science and society.

Organized by the College of Humanities and UNIL-EPFL dhCenter in partnership with the Initiative for Media Innovation (IMI), the DHdays will be a unique opportunity for participants to learn about the latest work on how digital innovations the arts, humanities, and social sciences are impacting the world we live in – for better or for worse. This year’s event will address the three key themes of digital humanities (DH) & Media, DH & Education, and DH & Heritage.

“There is so much digital growth happening so fast, we often don’t know what our colleagues are doing, and we don’t yet have an overarching vision of the digital humanities community of practice,” says co-organizer Isaac Pante, dhCenter academic director for UNIL. “The DHdays is an open invitation to create synergies, not only in Lausanne but beyond.”

A place of experimentation

A senior lecturer in digital culture and digital publishing at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Pante is also the UNIL academic director of the dhCenter. As a strong proponent of the empowerment of students in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) through the development of computational thinking skills, he hopes that the DHdays will bring the digital humanities into an open dialogue with the public via roundtables and a project forum, where visitors will be able to experiment with technologies used in DH research, like video games.

“When SSH students step into computational learning, by developing a video game for example, they have to learn a whole new language. But after studying computational models, there is a feedback effect that allows you to start thinking computationally,” he explains. “The beauty of the digital humanities is that you can then bring an SSH perspective to computational problems: for example, understanding the historical context of a video game’s source code.”

“The future is already here”

An international list of speakers from academia, media, education, and culture will also lead participants on an exploration of how digital tools and methods have transformed research questions and practices in the arts and humanities as well as the social, engineering, and computer sciences.

“For the DHdays, we have tried to bring together the best international experts and local actors,” says co-organizer Béla Kapossy, director of EPFL’s College of Humanities. “For example, the session on the future of the press will feature a dialogue with the former head of R&D of The New York Times, the former director of strategic initiatives of The Washington Post, the editor-in-chief of Le Temps, the head of interactive content of Tamedia, and several researchers working on the history of the press at UNIL and EPFL. IMI’s research projects and the best start-ups in the field will also be presented.”

On the subject of video games, the conference will also notably feature Lancaster University professor Sally Bushell, co-creator of the Minecraft-inspired literature game LitCraft, as well as French video game design pioneer and Adibou co-creator Muriel Tramis.

“These kinds of events are often confined to an expert audience, but we want to open up the discussion on the impacts of the digital, whether it’s video games, media recommendation algorithms, cultural heritage preservation, or digital citizenship,” Pante says.

He emphasizes that the DHdays is intended not as a showcase, but as a celebration of the diversity of DH research. Although it’s clear the two-day event will not cover all DH subjects, it will represent an important opportunity for researchers to make new connections.

“In the words of William Gibson, “the future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed”. We DH researchers all have strengths and weaknesses that can inform one another. The goal is thus not for everyone to become an expert in everything, but to facilitate a dialogue and fruitful complementarities.”
DHdays – practical details

DHdays – practical details

This two-day bilingual event, to be held at the SwissTech Convention Center, is free and open to the public. Please register to attend in Lausanne, or through our online attendance option. Please visit the event website, dhdays.ch, for the full program and speaker list, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and/or Twitter to receive all the latest updates.

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The EPFL College of Humanities congratulates Daniel Harasim, also a member of the dhCenter, for earning an EPFL Doctoral Program Thesis Distinction for his PhD research in the Digital and Cognitive Musicology Lab (DCML).

The Journal for Digital Legal History (DLH), a diamond Open Access and peer-reviewed international journal hosted by the Open UGent platform, is inviting contributions from researchers working on legal history with digital, empirical and computational approaches for its first annual issue, to be published in November 2022. The journal welcomes all research questions and outputs at the intersection of legal history, digital humanities and empirical legal studies, broadly defined.

In the field of legal history, digital methods are hardly ever the centrepiece of a publication itself, if not downplayed. In 1997, Richard Evans claimed that: ‘How we know about the past, what historical causation is, how we define a historical fact, whether there is such a thing as historical truth or objectivity – these are questions that most historians have happily left to one side as unnecessary distractions from their essential work in the archives’ (R. Evans, In Defence of History, 1997, p. 9). Nevertheless, in the 21st century, the work of a historian or legal scholar does not stop in the archives. Often, digital or computational techniques are applied in seemingly pedestrian ways such as “searching” full texts, or they are applied in more elaborate methods to transform the historical facts embedded in our precious archival material or legal documents, to answer novel research questions or to explore well-trodden paths from an innovative perspective.

The application of digital techniques to legal history research is often overlooked or omitted from discussions on methodology. Researchers are encouraged to highlight the technical tools or methods that proved effective to your projects, without neglecting all the trials and errors that helped structure your final choice of any particular technique. You are welcome to illustrate your work with all forms of outputs, from notebooks to graphs, networks, maps, diagrams, etc.. If you have developed software, a database or a dataset that others could reuse, feel welcome to publish it here.

General Call for Contributions: continuous call for submissions

Submissions that address legal sources from any historical period and any part of the world are welcome. Collaborative and multi-authored pieces by authors from different countries working across disciplines are actively encouraged.

Publications in English are accepted; those in German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are also supported, but please contact the editorial board in advance. If you wish to publish in another language than mentioned here, please contact the editorial board.

Topic suggestions

• Original research articles (up to 10,000 words).
• Reproduction-pieces: Can the results of classic studies be replicated through DLH-techniques?
• A dedicated section for your Digital Legal History events: If you are organizing a panel, conference or webinar series that prominently features Digital Humanities performed on legal sources, contact us for a dedicated focus section allowing you to publish the papers or conclusions of your meeting.
• Shorter focus pieces or provocations (around 5,000 words with fewer footnotes).
  • Conference and seminar reports.
  • Spotlight articles: inspiration from other social sciences fields on the promising benefits of specific Digital Humanities techniques that could be successfully applied to Digital Legal History.
• Presentations or Reviews of softwares, databases, datasets, websites, and platforms.
  • Tutorials: general presentation, application through a specific study angle (legal linguistics, marginalia analysis).
• Trials & errors: reflections on the productive role of wandering and errors in abandoned, rejected or substantially modified past projects that could help improve the current methodology (inspired by the Journal of Trial & Error).

Formats

Submissions in traditional and non-traditional formats will be considered: from traditional articles to blog posts, from plain text to linked data or hyperlinked texts, from posters to Notebooks, etc.. Illustrations could be included in the form of notebooks, graphs, diagrams, maps, networks, and images.

Timeline

Contributions should be published within 2-4 months, depending on a positive peer-review. Please send a short abstract of 150 words, including a provisional title, suggested format and up to five keywords. You can find the detailed guidelines for authors on the journal’s website. Please include a short biographical statement for the proposed contributor(s), including the area of expertise, interests, affiliation (if applicable), and any other relevant information. Abstract submissions will receive a response within 14 days (in July and August, this may take a bit longer).

More info: https://openjournals.ugent.be/dlh/

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The EPFL Sustainability Unit is seeking applications for a Responsible digitalization Project Manager, for a one-year renewable contract to start as soon as possible. The deadline to apply is June 24th.

This position As part of the EPFL Sustainability Unit, the successful candidate will be responsible for initiating the responsible digital transformation of the school, in collaboration with the EcoCloud Center. The objective is to draw up a general inventory and implement a strategy to reduce the environmental and social footprint of digital technology in the institution.

Main duties and responsibilities include :

• Define and implement the digital sobriety strategy, in collaboration with the relevant departments and the EcoCloud center (for server, data center and computing system aspects):
• Contribute to the comprehensive analysis of the environmental impacts of digital technology at EPFL
• Define and organize the planification of reduction measures
• Support faculties and services concerned in the implementation of these measures
• Contribute to the design and deployment of specific measures to extend IT equipment life
• Monitor the impact reduction through performance indicators (KPIs)
• Implement awareness campaigns and internal training in digital sobriety for various target publics
• Monitor and support the concerned departments in their reflection on the videoconferencing optimization
• Coordinate working groups
• Ensure that sustainability criteria are taken into account in all processes
• Participate in the implementation of the laboratory CO₂ emissions calculator developed by EPFL and its adaptation to the different research specificities
• Support laboratories that wish to use the CO₂ calculator and implement reduction measures

Profile :

• University or HES Master’s level, in environmental sciences, sustainability or equivalent
• At least 5 years’ experience in project management, ideally related to digital issues
• Strong interest in digital issues
• Expertise in life cycle assessment (OpenLCA software, Simapro…) and in digital carbon impact assessment a plus
• Animation of digital collage and climate fresk a plus
• Excellent writing, analytical and synthesis skills
• Enjoy teamwork and networking
• Organized, methodical, autonomous, the person must be able to make proposals
• Interpersonal skills, ability to listen
• French and English fluent
• Ideally, basic knowledge of the typical architecture of cloud systems (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Please visit the EPFL website to apply.

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From exploring the nature of creativity to turning a building into an instrument, a unique collaboration between EPFL’s Digital and Cognitive Musicology Lab (DCML) and celebrated jazz pianist Michael Wollny aims to push the boundaries of music theory.

During an animated discussion of Wollny’s artistic residency in the office of DCML head Martin Rohrmeier, it is easy to forget whether the topic of discussion is art or science, but maybe there are fewer differences than we think. For both Rohrmeier and Wollny, their process – whether working on a research project or a jazz composition – starts with creative inspiration followed by problem-solving and mechanical busywork. Along the way, there are unforeseen events and ‘mistakes’…which nevertheless usually turn out to be very useful.

“After a while, you think that a certain path isn’t exciting enough to pursue, but this is dangerous because sometimes, you need to stay on an unexciting path to discover the unexpected,” says Wollny. “Other times, I can feel when it’s time to move on. But even then, the idea is not garbage; in fact, I think most of my pieces I created from the ‘garbage’ of other projects.”

As a scientist, Rohrmeier agrees. “I think a great metaphor can be found in nature: the compost in the garden or the fallen tree in the forest eventually decompose to become new fertile ground. You may hear the tree fall, but not the grass grow; most progress does not come with a bang.”

“Creativity comes when you have constraints”

The opportunity to examine notions of creativity and intuition and their relation to scientific research was among Wollny’s motivations for accepting the DCML’s invitation as part of the CDH Artist-in-Residence program. As a jazz artist known for his curiosity and imagination, Wollny, who is also a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig, hopes that studying music theory with Rohrmeier will create fertile ground for improvisational creativity.

“Many musicians consciously avoid looking too closely at their work, but it’s important to push against boundaries,” he says. “As an improvising musician, being in this space where I don’t know what is going to happen next is sacred, because usually we have a program or an agenda. Paradoxically, looking at things more closely makes me free in the moment to not expect anything.”

Freedom and creativity often come when you have constraints; for example, if you restrict yourself to composing a piece using only four notes, that’s when you get ideas,” Rohrmeier adds.

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The Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences is seeking a full-time project scientist for a 22-month contract starting in October 2022.

The successful candidate will work on the Austrian Science Fund project “Auden Musulin Papers: A Digital Edition of W.H. Auden’s Letters to Stella Musulin”.

Tasks
• TEI/XML markup of transcripts
• Transcription of (additional) edition documents
• Historical and biographical research
• Review and documentation of previous and ongoing research processes
• Participation in project management and team meetings
• Participation in conference organisation, preparation of edited volume, and outreach activities

Profile
• Master’s degree in a humanities subject
• Advanced knowledge of TEI/XML
• Excellent command of English
• Accuracy and reliability; commitment to teamwork; excellent communication skills

Applications are due by June 15. View the full job description (PDF) for application details.

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EPFL startup School Rebound has developed a revolutionary application that uses artificial intelligence to help students improve their handwriting in a fun and personalized way. Nearly 15,000 students in Switzerland, France, and Italy are already putting it to work.

Handwriting problems affect nearly 25% of children aged 5 to 12. These problems, if not managed early on, can negatively impact them throughout their school years. EPFL startup School Rebound has provided a concrete solution to this problem by developing an application that uses tablets and artificial intelligence to better detect potential handwriting problems and support children as they learn. The subscription app is called Dynamilis, and can be used by all children learning to write – with difficulties or without – at home or at school. Dynamilis has already been downloaded more than 10,000 times and will be released soon in England and the United States.

While Dynamilis was free during its testing phase, it switched to a subscription model this past March. After a free trial week, parents, therapists, and schools are offered a monthly or annual subscription. Costs depend on the number of children using the application.

L. Boatto, A. Peguet, T. Asselborn, S. Viquerat, P. Dillenbourg © 2022 Dynamilis / Sven Viquerat

Strengths and weaknesses at a glance

School Rebound was founded in 2021 based on the research done by CEO Thibault Asselborn for his PhD thesis at EPFL’s Computer-Human Interaction in Learning and Instruction Laboratory (CHILI). “Some children have handwriting problems that may stay hidden for months. Because the problems are not obvious, parents and teachers may hesitate to consult specialists,” says Asselborn. “During this time, the students can accumulate learning difficulties as these handwriting problems monopolize their concentration and prevent them from developing other skills. This could cause students to lose confidence and develop significant educational blocks.”

As part of his PhD research, Asselborn helped develop an algorithm that can rapidly analyze a child’s handwriting. The child only has to write for 30 seconds on an iPad with an Apple Pencil for the application to establish their handwriting profile. “The tests we ran in the lab lasted about 20 minutes, but they didn’t take certain factors into account, which may reduce the accuracy of the analyses,” says Asselborn. Dynamilis evaluates dynamic aspects of handwriting that the human eye can’t see such as stability, pressure, speed, and angle. “Our app gives detailed analyses about the motor aspects of handwriting. This can give parents an initial indication before determining whether their child has difficulties with handwriting and, if so, to what degree. If the difficulties surpass a certain level, they’re recommended to go see a specialist.”

Learning dressed up like a game

Based on a child’s handwriting profile, the app recommends personalized activities to practice the fundamental aspects of handwriting – all while playing games. “The in-app tests don’t look like medical tests in the strictest sense,” says Asselborn. “It’s important to have an air of fun to avoid making children feel like they’re taking an exam, which can put them on edge.” The playful aspect during the testing phase is crucial for the School Rebound team and their Chairman, Pierre Dillenbourg, also head of CHILI. “While we were developing Dynamilis, our aim was to help children,” says Dillenbourg. “To do that, we knew we had to go beyond a simple handwriting-analysis program and give them activities to support learning and, for the more severe cases, correction. Games are an effective solution for children who are having problems in school because of their issues with handwriting.”

These activities, developed with game-design experts, can be done by children at home to help them improve their handwriting or at school for enhanced learning. For children with handwriting difficulties, the activities can be done with a therapist.

Close collaboration with therapists and schools

“We worked with nearly 50 therapists to develop our app and we received encouraging feedback,” says Dillenbourg. “The alacrity and precision of Dynamilis’ analyses lets them dedicate more time to children during their sessions.” Children may also use the app to continue practicing between sessions, concentrating on certain aspects (like pressure) which are difficult to practice on paper.

School Rebound teamed up with many schools to test the application on students. “We worked with schools in the Geneva, Vaud, and Neuchatel cantons as well as the Bern University of Teacher Education, the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), and the International Schools of Lausanne and Geneva,” says Asselborn. The collaboration with Swiss schools is continuing as a pilot project in 12 Vaud canton schools. “We’ve gotten letters from teachers who’ve seen their students improve leaps and bounds,” he adds. “Some students even come before class to practice.”

Science and ethics council

School Rebound has created a science and ethics council composed of experts in dysgraphia, dyslexia, data science, and education. “Our scientific model and rigor are important, and are what set us apart from other existing applications,” says Dillenbourg. Dynamilis is not alone in its market, “but is the only application that combines a complete handwriting analysis with personalized learning activities.”

This article was originally published on 28.04.2022 by Leila Ueberschlag, EPFL.

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