On this page, you find more SIRA-related information and resources. You may just scroll or go directly to a topic by clicking it.
SIRA statues
SIRA mailing list
SIRA support for conferences and workshops
Archive of past SIRA events
Student statistics
Distance teaching and learning
Useful resources and links
The latest version of the SIRA statutes can be viewed or downloaded below.
SIRA hosts a strictly moderated mailing list called sira-news to keep members informed of SIRA events and other important news concerning Swiss Informatics education and research. SIRA members may also use this list to post information about Swiss IT events that are of clear interest to the SIRA members at large (i.e., not just to a distinct subset), such as awards, funding opportunities, or major policy events.
New SIRA members are automatically subscribed to this list. Although members are free to unsubscribe, they are strongly encouraged to remain subscribed. Postings are strictly moderated, and traffic is normally very low.
Upon request, SIRA provides financial support for international scientific conferences and major international workshops held in Switzerland. The details are given below.
For events held in 2025, the application deadline is September 30, 2024.
The event must be an
SIRA must be mentioned as a supporter of the event in all publicity. In all materials and communications where logos of conference sponsors/donors/supporters are displayed, the SIRA logo must be included. Where applicable, the logo shall be linked to the SIRA website https://sira.swissinformatics.org.
The total amount available for 2025 will be approximately CHF 7.500. Depending on the number of applications received, organizers may expect a SIRA contribution between 1 and 3 kCHF.
Organizers must apply by the indicated deadline. Applications shall include the following information:
*The event sponsor is the organization who takes the financial risk of the event and will receive the financial surplus if there will be any. If there is more than one event sponsor, list all of them with the percentages of their shares.
Applications shall be submitted by e-mail with subject “SIRA conference funding application” to Martin Glinz <glinz@ifi.uzh.ch> who will coordinate applications on behalf of the SIRA Board.
The SIRA board will review the applications received for 2025 events and notify applicants by November 20, 2024.
Submissions must be received by the indicated deadline at 23:59 AoE the latest. This is a firm deadline.
This is the archive of past SIRA events as far as available.
The Swiss Federal Statistical Office provides a variety of student statistics. The links below lead to the core statistics. All of them are available in German, French and Italian. There is no full translation to English.
In the field Fachrichtung / Branche d’ etudes / Indirizzo di studio you can choose:
In the field Fachrichtung / Branche d’ etudes / Indirizzo di studio you can choose:
When the Covid-19 pandemic forced all universities to switch to distance teaching, SIRA has collected resources and experiences about distance teaching/learning. All information was contributed by SIRA members. As the collected information might still be useful, we keep it on this page.
We invite the readers of this page to share their experiences with the community.
Tools listed alphabetically. Find experiences with sone tools in the experience reports below.
Here is a spreadsheet created by Matthias Hauswirth (USI) comparing the features offered by various remote video teaching solutions.
Here is an article (by a course vendor) with an overview of learning management systems that you might find useful.
Here is an interesting blog post by Daniel Stanford (Director of Faculty Development and Technology Innovation at DePaul University’s Center for Teaching and Learning). He classifies distance teaching/learning techniques with respect to their immediacy and required bandwidth. The main conclusion is that there are viable alternatives to videoconferencing.
At BFH, we started with first experiments with MS Teams and jit.si last week. Everything went smooth by then.
Today, the first full day of “synchronous” distance learning took place. First experiences include:
In general, the following compliance rules for participants seem to apply:
No reports for asynchronous teaching (e.g., video recording) available so far.
EPFL has decided to use Zoom for online interaction. From what I’ve heard from my faculty members, people were pleasantly surprised by how well it works. I used it to record two video lectures and it worked well for that purpose also. The big issues so far has been inadequate internet connectivity in peoples’ home and a difficulty for faculty members who lecture using black/whiteboards (EPFL will supply tablets, but you all know how attached some professors are to chalk and blackboards…).
UniSG Informatics professors mainly use Zoom. Lectures are recorded directly.
At USI we switched to 100% online teaching last Thursday. Different faculty members use different setups.
In my own course with 50 students I use Panopto for live-streaming and recording (has a ~1 minute lag) and Teams for feedback from students (via chat messages, no audio or video, where they sometimes paste figures/marked up screenshots of what they have a question about). I stop every few minutes to read questions and address them. I use this hybrid setup because Panopto provides really helpful lecture recordings, and some of my students now follow the course asynchronously.
I held a lab session on Friday, where my four TAs spent the morning having MS Teams chats for formative assessments with pairs of students (we used my home-made course platform to allow students to queue for such sessions, and the TAs then called the pairs on Teams).
We use different approaches to communicate visually: we use shared online whiteboards (e.g., Explain Everything), and shared online code pads, instructors use tablets (e.g., I use an iPad Pro + Apple Pencil + Reflector to mirror my iPad screen onto my Mac, where my screen and webcam is recorded and broadcast), document cameras, or they draw on top of Keynote or PowerPoint slides (Keynote is better: you can draw on the slides on your iPad and concurrently display/broadcast the slides with the minimal-lag real-time drawing on your computer).
Below, we provide links to resources that we deem interesting and useful for SIRA members. If readers would like to add resources to this page, please contact the SIRA board.
In order to encourage more girls to choose Informatics as the subject of their studies or apprenticeships, SI has published a series of interviews with women in Informatics. The interviews are intended to provide role models.They can be accessed here:
https://magazine.swissinformatics.org/en/a-stage-for-women-in-it/
The TA-SWISS Foundation has published a study on the opportunities and risks of AI:
Christen M., Mader C., Čas J., Abou-Chadi T., Bernstein A., Braun Binder N., Dell’Aglio D., Fábián L., George D., Gohdes A., Hilty L., Kneer M., Krieger-Lamina J., Licht H., Scherer A., Som C., Sutter P., Thouvenin F. (2020). Wenn Algorithmen für uns entscheiden: Chancen und Risiken der künstlichen Intelligenz. In TA-SWISS Publikationsreihe (Hrsg.): TA 72/2020. Zürich: vdf
The study is in German with extended summaries in English, French and Italian. It is available as a free e-book at:
https://vdfa.ch/open-access/wenn-algorithmen-fur-uns-entscheiden-chancen-und-risiken-der-kunstlichen-intelligenz-e-book.html
or
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/188444/
TA-SWISS is a non-profit foundation that was established to examine the opportunities and risks of new technologies. Its mission is anchored in the Swiss Federal Act on the Promotion of Research and Innovation. As a centre of excellence, the Foundation for Technology Assessment is incorporated in the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. TA-SWISS is financed exclusively through public funding.
SIRA is a member of Informatics Europe, which is the organization of the Informatics departments at European universities.
Informatics Europe publishes reports and other resources that are of value for the SIRA members. Below are some resources that we find particularly interesting. The full list of Informatics Europe publications is available here.
The Informatics for All Initiative, devised jointly by Informatics Europe and ACM Europe aims at giving due recognition to Informatics as an essential foundational discipline for education in the 21st century. Here is the Informatics for All strategy paper.
The working group on Ethical/Social Impact of Informatics as a Study Subject in Informatics University Degree Programs has created a report, summarizing the results of the online survey conducted among the working group members in spring 2019. This is a first step towards a more deep and informed discussion about the topic of ethical/social impact in Informatics university degree programs. Download the report.
This is a joint white paper of the Informatics Europe Ethics Working Group and ACM Europe on automated decision making (ADM). James Larus (EPFL and SIRA Board member) is the lead author of this report. Download it here.
Sixth edition (2012-2017) of the Informatics Europe report on Informatics higher education in Europe: key data about institutions, degrees, students, positions, and salaries. Download it here.
Informatics Europe has created a booklet about promoting women Informatics Research and Education, covering topics such as recruiting female students and recruiting, keeping and promoting female scientists.
More Information (https://www.informatics-europe.org/working-groups/women-in-icst-research-and-education.html)
Download the booklet (pdf)
Paper copies can be ordered from the office of Informatics Europe.
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"Die IT ist ein wesentlicher Entwicklungsfaktor und Treiber in Technologie, Markt und Gesellschaft. Es ist mir ein wichtiges Anliegen, IT als Werkzeug im Dienste der Anwender zu betrachten. Für einen verantwortungsvollen Einsatz der IT sind sowohl Ethik als auch eine fundierte Ausbildung unabdingbar. Mit IT Expert SI bilden wir eine hervorragende Plattform um diese Themen wirksam zu fördern und in die Entwicklung der Schweizer IT einfliessen zu lassen.
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