If you are looking for an Easy A, this is not it. The best way I can describe this class is that it was like trying to build an IKEA dresser without instructions. It was intensely frustrating and would have been a lot more efficient with more guidance, tools, and instructions. In the end, after cobbling together my best effort, I feel like I've gained something, but I'm not entirely sure what.

The group project component was exhausting. Were it not for the already infuriating and devastating events of 2020, I would've found it even worse. With a couple of classes on Tableau and no classes on HTML, CSS, or Javascript, we were expected to draw upon the limited explanations in lectures to produce a working final project. Unless you already have some knowledge of data visualization and analysis, this class will be a demanding one.

I think the instructors clearly have experience in their fields. Professor Garcia is a very compassionate and articulate professor, and she is very in tune with students' needs. She welcomes everyone to reach out to her and ask for help. Our TAs were also very skilled and helped with a lot of tasks. I think the course altogether could have benefited from a greater emphasis on the "how" of Digital Humanities rather than the "why." Perhaps in previous quarters, this class was a cop out, but now it is a lot more rigorous. Be careful.

Best professor I have had at UCLA hands down. Professor Garcia cares so much about her students and will do everything she can to make the course as easy as possible for everyone, while ensuring that you get something useful out of it. You work on an amazing group project and the TA's are super helpful as well. The class itself is very interesting and in terms of exams/quizzes is very easy. The main part of the class is the group project, and as long as you have a good group and do your part of the work, you should be fine!

I have had Professor Garcia for other DH classes after and she is just an amazing human being! I highly recommend any class with her!

This class is hard to judge remotely as as a previous reviewer stated it doesn't work incredibly well solely online. There isn't a ton of incentive to attend lecture and discussion after a while because the group project (which makes up most of your grade) can be accomplished without them.

This class is the embodiment of the phrase "you get what you put in," because in theory, you could gain a few marketable skills (Tableau, Excel, etc.) if you put in the time. In practice, however, the incentives aren't there to do this and most students put in the bare minimum.

The professor was really nice and clearly loves what she does. Ruth Livier was an awesome TA who always brought a cheery personality to what was otherwise a fairly dismal time (coronavirus). She really cared about us and was always free to answer questions or give feedback.

I hope they stop doing this class asynchronously. The lectures seemed so irrelevant to the group project it just makes it a hassle to do work for both and not have classtime for the project. It's a class where you can get an A for mediocre work but group projects are with people who don't care and don't want to try. It's just not worth the effort. Theres pretty much no dedicated attention to the group project in class or lab, even the class assignments aren't that helpful. You'd have to go to the TA directly like during lab breakout room/approach them or go to office hours. They don't really check in or clarify their expectations well.

Someone described this class as building Ikea furniture with no instructions and I 100% agree with them. If you have no background in coding, which you really don't need in this class, but would be super helpful, or data analysis this class may be difficult but is not impossible. I had no background in any of these subjects so it was a bit difficult at first. However, I did enjoy this class. Most of your grade is based on the group project you do over the quarter and the other assignments include 2 big data and map assessments, 2 discussion posts, and 2 concept maps. Overall, its not bad. It may seem hard and difficult at first but very rewarding

DH 101 has been one of the most enriching classes I've taken at UCLA so far! The tutorials and key concepts of the class are fairly straightforward and are great preparation for constructing the final project. Professor Sanders does a phenomenal job at balancing theory and practice in the lessons and tutorials, and she is incredibly understanding about meeting assignment deadlines. Professor Sanders and TA Diana Blanco were incredible resources, especially for discussing the data visualizations we created for assignments and how we could improve them during office hours.

As a planned DH minor, I really enjoyed the assignment of defining what the DH field is on our own terms, with a specific aim towards how we can answer this question in a job interview. It was also really cool getting to meet other students with much different academic focuses, though I wish we had had more opportunities to meet other students in lectures and discussions who weren't part of our project groups.

Even if you aren't taking this class for the DH minor, you can still pick up a strong introduction to project management, website design, and humanities research. Professor Sanders' teaching is phenomenal, and I would recommend their class to anyone.

DISCLAIMER: Taken Fall 2021 Hybrid with no exams

If you want a class where you will probably get an A (I mean, just look at the grade distribution) then this will boost your GPA. HOWEVER, it is not a cakewalk. There is a significant amount of work and that can be made very bad if you have a bad group project team. The weekly assignments are pretty doable. The readings are generally not helpful at all or at least there is little incentive to read them because the class mostly revolves around the final project which you work on bit by bit each lab class. Occasionally there will be an assignment that asks about knowledge from the reading, but since it was hybrid and not timed, you could easily read the reading and then answer the assignment without reading all assigned readings.

The TA grades everything. Prof Sanders is really nice but you mostly are interacting with the TA. I recommend understanding the final project rubric and coming up with a good plan on tackling parts of it that are not addressed weekly. For Fall 2021, the biggest thing we had to tackle outside of an assignment was the timeline. For weekly assignments, try to always tie it back to your final project. For example, if asked to make any data visualization, just make one that you would make for your project anyways.

Putting everything on the website itself was by far the hardest part and it is not taught in class. You will already have something to put on your website by around Week 3-4. Try putting it on your website and messing around with the website tools ASAP. That way, if you are struggling, you can ask for help in Week 5 and not Week 10 when everyone else is too and also figuring out that website creation is no joke.

Dr. Sanders and my TA Elizabeth were awesome. Both were super supportive and receptive to feedback. Their feedback on assignments and their help with the project was great, and I think they both did an excellent job with the hybrid quarter.

As other reviewers mentioned, the course introduces you to a lot of different digital humanities tools. However, there is no incentive to learn these tools outside of the ones required for the project, and even then the work's divided among your group so you may not ever end up using some of the tools regardless. If you invest time and follow all of their tutorials, you'll get a lot of experience from this class. However, you can skip 60-80% of the content in this class and still receive an A.

The group project is a large chunk of your grade, and your experience with that is dependent on your groupmates.

Professor Sanders and also my TA Elizabeth were amazing. They were super understanding the entire quarter because of covid, and were always very generous with deadlines and office hours. The content of this course wasn't too bad.

But I really didn't enjoy the course overall. At first I thought it would be a fun redemption chance because I did pretty much the same class in college, but alone. When I found out it was basically the same thing, create a whole data project, but with a team, I thought, yes! I can redo it and create something bigger than I can do by myself by working with others.

Reframe that as a giant quarter-long group project and if you don't rng motivated teammates you're having a bad time. It's just a little too much with too much freedom and too few templates to do in one quarter. We learned about all these tools and there was so much support for us to learn how to use different applications that could help us with our project. But it was more of a like, if you want to spend the time going through this tutorial yourself, you can learn this tool. And here is the tutorial for this tool, but it's not required. So it felt like there was more material available to me than I had the time to actually go in and learn, so it felt like a waste that I wasn't able to get everything out of this class. Instead I was going around trying to pick up all the pieces that my teammates didn't do for our project.

I was also the only DH minor in my group, so of course I was going to take and enjoy this class, but my groupmates were just trying to pass. Hope you get other DH minors who are motivated too.

Professor Sanders is great! This classes was a hybrid (lecture online/lab in-person) and the way she designed the canvas shell was amazing. Super organized and you always knew exactly what you needed to do. The entire class was based on a quarter long group project with a group you get put in around week 2 based on common interests. This class not only teaches you technical skills like data visualizations, working with data, creating a website, ect., but also you will learn how to effectively work in a group and manage tasks. While I feel like I learned a lot through working with a group, I do wish there was a bit more focus on individual skill development and not just group work.