Final Reflection 

One of the most impactful learning experiences for me in this course was realizing how much I could express myself when I’m not worried about doing things the “right” way. I used to overthink my ideas, especially in creative assignments, but this course gave me space to experiment and reflect in a more personal way. For example, one activity that really helped me was the ALTCV we did at the beginning of the semester. I thought it would be something small, but it helped me learn how to connect my experiences and values visually, which I had never done before.

In my academic life, the tools we used have already helped me in other classes. I use the specific GPT aimed at analyzing and criticizing different arguments really helped me especially in my philosophical thinking class.

Socially, I’ve become a better listener. The Soliya sessions taught me to pause and take in someone’s ideas without rushing to respond. It also made me more comfortable sharing ideas without always being polished, which surprisingly made my conversations more genuine.

For my career, I think the biggest takeaway is how valuable creativity is outside of artistic fields. The tools we used, especially AI, showed me that creative thinking and communication are skills that are useful in any job. I’ve already started applying this to my internship applications and personal projects.

If I were to show someone what I learned in this course, I would choose these three things:

1. How important critical thinking and analysis is when it comes to reading and consuming content online and why it’s important to question everything you read.   https://reflect.creativitycourse.org/published/assessment-of-ai-tools/ 
2. My digital literacy portfolio presentation  – it really helped put into perspective what I am good at and what I need to work on in terms of digital literacies and skills. 
3. The game we created – it represents how we can put deep meaningful ideas to present different perspectives in a fun and interactive game  https://reflect.creativitycourse.org/published/unseen-a-day-in-my-life-as-a-muslim/
    

If I could change a few things about the course, I would recommend having a little more structure in the second half of the semester. Some weeks felt very open-ended and it was hard to know what to focus on. I’d also love if there were optional creative challenges each week, like small prompts that you could choose to do for fun or extra credit. That would give more space to try out new tools or ideas without pressure.

One sentence about the kind of person who should take this course: Anyone who wants to understand and further develop their digital skills and literacies while also learning other skills like game design.

As for the tools we learned, I loved learning about the new AI systems we can use like the different GPT’s that help us analyze an argument and reach a conclusion. Blogging on the class site was surprisingly enjoyable too; I liked the freedom to write in my own voice. On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy the amount of blog posts we had to write as it sometimes felt overwhelming. Lastly, I appreciated the use of classroom tech like the smart interactive boards, especially during group work.

For the creative part, I decided to write this like a letter to future students so they can know what to expect and how this course helped me grow.