Master's Degree in Digital Humanities

For some time now, more and more tech companies have been incorporating talent from the humanities and social sciences into their decision-making positions. These profiles, closer to the human phenomenon, can better understand the integration of technical solutions in society. Companies and public entities are finding that work on Big Data, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning requires both a human interpretation of the information and ethical guidance in data collection, as well as a genuinely scientific curiosity that, in addition to thinking about how to discover the answers, also imagines and designs the questions. In a world where humanity generates complex variables for analysis, it is necessary to understand reality and weigh up the social and cultural contexts. Thus, it is important not only to know the how but also the why and what for.

Digital Humanities are developed in this context as an emerging field in which Humanities and Social Sciences studies converge with new information technologies.

The Master's Degree in Digital Humanities covers the current training needs of synergies between the humanities and technology, thus adapting the digital transformation to cultural and social environments. With this, this Master's Degree will be able to provide graduates ready to carry out the necessary Digital Transformation of the cultural industries, as well as the literacy and education of our society in the field of humanities, supporting an integration between technology and humanities that has the human being, the user, at its centre.

Graduates of the Master's Degree in Digital Humanities can join different areas related to integrating technology and the humanities in public administration and private companies associated with the world of culture, heritage or communication, with job profiles of various denominations. Thus, they could be integrated into tasks such as:

• The management of digital and/or digitised heritage
• The creation and edition of books, multimedia content, transmedia, models, and/or 3D heritage representations
• The design of new types of education and training, integrating new narratives and/or educational technologies
• The representation and interaction with cultural heritage, through digital tools, for the knowledge and enjoyment of citizens of different ages and typologies
• Digital literacy and educational didactics (mainly related to humanistic subjects) in face-to-face, hybrid or non-face-to-face environments
• The use of content management software and web servers to display data and digital content from any branch of the humanities
• The dissemination and multimedia and/or interactive communication of any type of information, the success of which requires understanding the keys to communication and the application of technology to optimise these social interaction processes
• The management of innovation, information and data of research groups, especially in the humanities and social sciences and/or transdisciplinary subjects

The companies and institutions where graduates of the Master's Degree in Digital Humanities can work are very varied, places where the key is the intersection between the digital skills acquired and the humanistic profile, they bring to understand the human being about technology, such as, for example:

• Public administration entities related to education, humanities and social sciences
• Cultural industries include digital publishing, audiovisual communication, transmedia, video games, training content, augmented reality, etc.
• Companies involved in creating and managing websites, social networks, and interactive content
• Companies providing advisory and consultancy services in the humanities and social sciences, such as digitisation, document management, and/or museum management
• Library, archive, and museum management units
• Research entities, both in the social sciences and humanities, need professionals able to integrate these with technologies, such as Computer-Human Interaction Analysis, Artificial Intelligence-Human or Robot-Human, Sociology and Digital Anthropology, Smart Cities, Social Computing, Urban Planning, Cultural and Digital Heritage

The Master's Degree in Digital Humanities aims to train professionals in the humanities in applying digital technologies and tools for analysis, management, dissemination, digital literacy and communication in areas related to the Humanities and Social Sciences, digital heritage and cultural industries to provide added professional value. These professionals will be able to base their work in any sector for which they work, making a critical analysis of the impact of technology, from ethics and knowledge of its applicability to the current social and digital human reality.

To this end, this master's degree offers knowledge of the most advanced digital techniques in the field of digital humanities, training expert professionals in the design and management of projects, technological strategies analysis or informative, integrating methodologies and digital tools appropriate to their needs.

Specifically, the training objectives of the degree are:

• 1. Acquire advanced knowledge for the analysis and dissemination of information in the field of digital humanities.
• 2. Apply and integrate techniques and tools for the analysing, processing, preservation, literacy, dissemination and use of humanistic knowledge in the digital environment.
• 3. Evaluate and select appropriate digital methodologies and tools for new methods of analysis, processing, and use of humanistic knowledge.
• 4. Critically analyse the evolution of technologies' multidisciplinary impact on social interaction, thus enabling a critical contextual study of the new digital society.
• 5. Acquire the ability to transmit and communicate the results of scientific and technological innovation and research in digital humanities to specialised and non-specialised audiences.
• 6. Develop autonomy for participation in interdisciplinary projects and work teams.
• 7. Assume responsibility in their professional development, with the application of professional ethics, social responsibility and ethics, following democratic principles and values and the Sustainable Development Goals, in the field of digital humanities, education and cultural dissemination and transmission.

Therefore, this master's degree is focused on supporting the integration between technology and humanities required for a Digital Transformation that has the human being, the user, at its centre, an integration expressed in the Digital Spain Plan 2025 (Third Vice-Presidency of the Government. Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, 2020), whose objectives include "Strengthening the digital skills of workers and citizens as a whole" (Plan España Digital, p. 8), without forgetting training in legal and ethical aspects that affect them, such as intellectual property, access to information or personal data protection.

60 ECTS

The Master's Degree in Digital Humanities consists of 60 credits and lasts one academic year.

The Curriculum of the Master's Degree in Digital Humanities is structured into two modules:

• Compulsory Module (49.5 ECTS): aims at areas of application of the Digital Humanities that are directly linked to professional practice. It is organised into three subjects:
  • "Humanities and Innovation" subjects (19.5 ECTS), where aspects of ethics and digital citizenship are discussed, open data and quantitative analysis for humanists, digital literacy and digital skills in humanistic innovation.
  • Subject "Digital Transformation of Heritage" (12 ECTS) deals with managing digital heritage and information extraction and retrieval in digital humanities. It also aims to bring future graduates closer to professional practice and to encourage the development of technical, methodological, personal and participatory skills.
  • Subject "Digital Creation and Communication" (18 ECTS), in which, once the competencies related to the analysis and management of humanistic information in the digital sphere have been strengthened, the communication, dissemination and training of what has been analysed and managed are explored, through the design and management of digital content, Cultural and educational communication and dissemination, and the virtualisation and the use of multimedia and interactive 3D images in the humanities area.
• Master's Thesis module (10.5 ECTS), which is compulsory and consists of an original project in the area of Digital Humanities, which will be carried out individually and presented and defended in a public session before a University Court, in which the competencies acquired in the degree are synthesised and integrated.

Hybrid teaching mode (40% face-to-face and 60% non-face-to-face).

Therefore, of the total 600 hours of the degree, 357 of them are non-face-to-face. Each ECTS credit corresponds to between 2 and 6 hours of teaching, depending on the type of learning activity. The remaining hours of each training activity (to complete the 10 hours of the corresponding ECTS credit) correspond to synchronous transmission with TEAMS, group and individual tutorials, guided work, Polilabs, video watching, etc. Face-to-face hours are significant for specialised practical activities requiring the university's infrastructure.

The non-face-to-face hours of directed academic activity focus on synchronous online classes related to theoretical or practical aspects, including lectures, watching videos, reading texts, multimedia interaction, virtual laboratories and/or teamwork with faculty supervision. These hours always follow a directed and organised sequence. They are based on the flipped teaching methodology, with students acquiring the necessary knowledge, during the face-to-face classes or in synchronous virtual classes.

Likewise, the hours of autonomous work are related to the effort required by the student to consolidate the knowledge acquired, prepare evaluative tests or improve individual work, tasks and activities previously introduced by the teacher.

The teaching guide for each course details the specific percentage of classroom attendance for the course and its training activities (classroom theory, seminar theory and laboratory practice).

The Master's Degree in Digital Humanities is aimed at graduates in humanities and social sciences who wish to incorporate methodologies based on technology and digital tools to optimise their skills in areas such as educational innovation, the description, study, management and dissemination of museum and/or bibliographic heritage, as well as the analysis of qualitative and quantitative information in the context of research in humanities and social sciences.

The contents of the master's degree integrate basic knowledge acquired in the original bachelor's degrees with methodologies, skills and techniques from different fields of innovation, technology, communication and statistics, complementing their core training to adapt it to interdisciplinary work, education and effective communication to specialised and non-specialised audiences, which is either not covered at all in the original degrees or is not sufficiently specialised.

This integration allows students to apply the convergence of studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences with the new information technologies in different fields by v effectively using digital media. To visualise this almost unique quality of this master's degree, we can use the example of "Quantitative History", an emerging discipline in which both different tools (text mining, data mining, etc.) and complementary methodologies (historiography, discourse analysis, statistics, etc.) intersect. In addition, students will be able to better communicate the results of their research by working on digital skills such as interactive maps, 3D heritage representation, online communication, and/or non-linear storytelling, to give a few examples.

The reference degrees for access are those belonging to one of the following fields of knowledge:

• History of art and artistic expression, and fine arts
• History, archaeology, geography, philosophy and humanities
• Philology, Classical Studies, Translation and Linguistics
• Educational Sciences

PFor other degrees with fields of knowledge other than the above, applications will be assessed by the Master's Academic Committee based on the subjects studied in the "areas of competence" recommended by the non-profit academic association "Hispanic Digital Humanities. International Society (HDH)".

Given that teaching is conducted in Spanish, and to ensure that students can follow all training activities, students from non-Spanish-speaking countries will be required to have a level equivalent to B2 in Spanish, certified by any of the bodies recognised by ACLES (Association of Language Centres for Higher Education in Spain) and which must be verified and validated in the accreditation issued by the UNED. Students who have studied in educational systems that use Spanish as a vehicular language will be exempt from this accreditation.