It’s a tough question to answer, what has the course taught me? There are many things to choose from. The main things I learnt in this class can be summarized in one word: empathy. I would normally consider myself somewhat of a nice person, but this course has taught me things that have never even crossed my mind, or things that I never thought about in detail. This is something I’ve noticed since the beginning of the semester, when we talked about trauma-informed pedagogy. It’s not something I am used to seeing a professor talk about how students’ personal histories affect their learning abilities, which could be applied to all aspects of life. It made me a much more compassionate and understanding person as the course continued and we talked about all the things that make people different and how to accommodate these differences, like a person’s hybridity and history, their language(s) and translation, and even accessibility features. All these things tied together has made me much more thoughtful in regards to differences between me and anyone I interact with and how those differences could shape that interaction. These are all lessons that I will be using in my social life.

As for my academic life, this course has taught me a lot about using AI that I will benefit from greatly. I will definitely be using some new AI tools that I did not know about, such as Elicit or Perplexity Deep Research. I also learnt a lot from my classmates during the in-class discussions on how they used AI to make it more efficient.

I also learnt a lot about myself during this course. Aside from what I have already mentioned I learnt from the readings, I also learnt a lot from the process of creating my game. It felt like an interesting self-exploration journey that allowed me to face some personal issues that I normally do not address. My game was on a very personal topic, one which I do not talk about at all. For some reason, I felt comfortable enough to create my game on this topic and even reflect on it for a class, which felt like a big step for me as it’s not something I have even talked about with my friends, or something that I discuss with my family. The game also forced me to look into some details of how my own experiences affect my life, which I am very grateful for.

If I were to show someone my learning in this course, I know which assignments and readings I would want them to see. The first thing I would show them is the Lina Mounzer article, “War in Translation.” This was one of the most powerful and interesting assignments that we had in this course. The article gave me a whole new perspective on language, communication, and even empathy. The article’s discussion on the difficulties of expressing something in different languages felt like it could be a metaphor for many parts of life, and it taught me a lot about the struggles of language not only for the author and her translating, but about the difficulties anyone can have in expressing something in a language that they weren’t using for their own experiences.

The second assignment I would show them would have to be the Mid-course Reflection. I felt like that reflection highlighted the parts of the course that I found the most interesting and beneficial. I discussed the details and impact that some of the readings had on me, which I will not repeat in this reflection as I believe that I covered them well in the Mid-course reflection. I believe my post for that assignment not only highlights the parts I found had the greatest impact on me as a student, but the readings discussed are also very interesting.

I would also definitely use my game as an example of the learning of this course. The course discusses many topics that can be seen in a very personal way, which is demonstrated by the game. Not only did some of the topics we covered in this course help me create the game, but I think that it is a perfect example of the type of self-exploration this course has helped me achieve.

The final assignment I would use would be the AI Tools exploration assignment. I found this assignment very useful due to it giving me a whole new perspective on research and AI. I will definitely be using Elicit in my future research.

There are not many things I would change in this course. If I were to change anything about this course, I think I would probably find an alternative to Soliya. While I benefitted a bit from Soliya, I think it was very difficult to attend all the sessions and participate meaningfully. There were many long silences and people who refused to participate which made the whole experience a lot less meaningful than it could have been. While it all comes down to who you are placed with, I think there could be better alternatives. Another thing I would change about this course (other than it being at a later time) would be the way AI is explored. It felt as though we did not spend too much time exploring AI, and that was being done mostly in assignments. I think there are many more interesting discussions that could have been made about AI that we did not have time for.

I think this course should be taken by anyone who wants to learn more about the different experiences that make people different.

We used many tools throughout this course. The constant interactive use of the projectors in the class, whether it be when we were split into groups, or the daily starting activities spread around the projectors, was a very different experience. I enjoyed how interactive it was as it made the learning experience much more efficient. Another tool I liked using was this website. Having assignments public for other students to see made me much more attentive to the quality of my work, making sure that the quality is good enough for me to not mind anyone being able to read it. I also enjoyed exploring the AI tools, which taught me about various AI tools I never knew about, such as Elicit which I will definitely use for future research. There were also some less significant but useful tools that I enjoyed using, such as the website we used to annotate the Lina Mounzer article. It was a new discovery for me and it would be useful to be able to annotate future readings. Another useful tool was the 2-minute surveys. They allowed me to reflect on what I learnt during the class which helped me go back and think about the class.

The GCC experience was very interesting as it allowed us to interact with students from backgrounds we would not normally interact with. I found the initial meeting to be very interesting as we got a completely different perspective than our own to respond to the questions within the meetings. I think it could have been slightly better if the later activities were done in a meeting rather than on Slack.