This course has been a great journey filled with learning, new experiences and new skills. Beyond the classroom I have learned a lot about who I am, what my passions are and what I’m most proud of. I’ve also gained intercultural experience and new digital and AI literacy and usage skills. This final reflection discusses my learning experiences gained, digital tools used and so much more which took place during this course.

Most impactful learning experiences

Two of the most impactful learning experiences for me in this course was the first assignment, the alternative CV as well as the IKIGAI which we created during our narrative game assignment. These tasks helped me learn more about myself. The alternative CV helped me isolated the parts of me which I am truly proud of and shape my identity. It was a breath of fresh air in comparison to a traditional CV where academic grades and experiences are the most important. It made me realize that I don’t really discuss with my friends and loved ones the parts of my identity which matter to me most. It also brought to my attention that I need to work on my hobbies more during my spare time whether jewelry or fashion design. The IKIGAI helped develop this further by mapping out what I love, what I am good at, what the world needs and what I can get paid for. By mapping this out I became more aware of the intersections between these different variables and started to come up with potential career paths which blend my interests and skills with what I could get potentially paid for.

Another impactful experience was having to consistently write blog posts. During high school I had taken English language and literature with a teacher who wasn’t that fond of me and was quite discouraging. As a result, I started to feel less confident about my writing and it wasn’t until I came to university and got feedback from many professors when I started to gain back confidence. Having to constantly practice writing through blogposts really helped with my confidence. I think its also because it isn’t as structured as an academic paper so I get to really develop my own writing style and show my personality and raw emotions through my blog posts. This is something which I will take with me throughout my academic life. In many other courses I am asked to write several reflections throughout the semester so I now have the ability and understanding to do so.

The Tahrir trip taught me a lot of skills which I will use in my social life such as active listening, mutual respect and trying to understand the points of view of those who I might disagree with. The Tahrir trip involved going to the AUC campus in Tahrir and meeting up with international students who were studying Arabic. I loved this experience so much and it was genuinely really fun to get to know the other students and their thoughts about Egypt. I had the preconception that foreigners would think that Egypt is unsafe and that they would be worried about walking in the streets alone. To my surprise one of the students who is originally from the US told me that he felt more safe on the metro in Egypt than on the US subway. This taught me to try to speak with new people without having formed preconceptions; something I will try to incorporate in my social life.

In terms of things I will use in my career life it will definitely be utilizing Gemini canvas, learning about how AI reproduces systemic biases and understanding the 4 I’s of oppression. Gemini Canvas is really useful as it not only produces an output like other LLMs it creates a canvas to allow you to preview the code, presentation or word file. I can use this to write code for algorithmic trading and financial modeling as I continue diving deeper into the world of finance. Understanding the biases of AI ties into this point, knowing how to mitigate and fact check for biases would allow me to use AI in my profession without fear of errors and mistakes. Looking more at the work environment which is just as important, I can detect potential oppression that employees are facing whether ideological, institutional, interpersonal or internalized and act accordingly minimizing their effects.

The empathy toy which we played with during class taught me skills which I will carry with me in my social, academic and professional life. The toy consisted of building blocks which one player put together. Two other players were blindfolded; one touched the blocks and described it while the other tried to build it. It has taught me to be patient and more understanding of people who suffer from disabilities.

Showing my learning in this course

If I were to show someone my learning in this course, I would start by showing them my alternative CV. This was a really nice introductory assignment and it set the tone for the course as a different or non-traditional one. I really enjoyed creating this assignment and I felt so proud when I finished creating it so I even showed it to all my family and friends. It was also sort of like an ice breaker and conversation starter; I got to see the things which meant the most to my peers and started some nice conversations during the class after it was due. In my opinion this made the discussions we had in the classroom during future lectures much richer; I got a glimpse into everyone’s personality and could understand how their views connected with their identities.

I would also show them my AI in your profession assignment. I feel that this was a really insightful and applicable part of the course. It transformed the theoretical discussions of the different uses of AI in class to the corporate world which I aim to join. By discussing with a professor and professional working in my field I started to get more familiar with the general thoughts of the industry on AI and how its currently being used. It gave me better insights into what human skills are becoming more valuable in this day and age as well as what skills I need to acquire in terms of AI usage to avoid falling behind. Showing other students this assignment would prove to them that this course isn’t just something you take and do well in to get a good grade, it’s a course which you try to excel in to be able to use in your future given the rapid and constant technological advancements.

Thirdly, I would show my digital narrative game assignment, especially the final draft which contains the game I created “The Artisan’s Bench”. This project was really special because it allowed me to merge my personal interest in jewelry creation and my passion for handmade things with the AI tools we were learning about, specifically Gemini Canvas. Instead of asking us to write a paper about something important to us, we used a widely available AI tool to create a fun game to transfer our message to the players. Showing someone the game I created, The Artisan’s bench, highlights the blend between the digital and AI literacy aspects of the course.

Points of potential improvement for the course

If I could change one thing about the course it would be to include more in person intercultural experiences such as the tahrir trip. I have found that it is a lot easier to interact in person and it is a lot more meaningful. Even though, I still benefited greatly from online intercultural experiences such as Soliya I found a lot less interaction between the participants. People were a lot more shy and less people attended the sessions and participated as the weeks went on.

Another thing I would change is the timing of the assignments. I feel that we should have finished the narrative game during Ramadan to avoid added pressure at the end of the semester. It might be that the spring semester is shorter so deadlines are closer together, but in general I prefer to have less work due during the last couple of weeks in the semester as its usually the time when all professors put a deadline for final papers and projects. That way students would priorities the assignments a lot more as they’re not juggling different heavy weight projects for each course.

I also think it would be nice to add a task for each student to present their findings from the AI in Your Profession assignment. That way we can all share our discoveries from the interviews and our finding and discuss them together. This would turn the assignment into a great collaborative class discussion which would add insights and general knowledge on how AI is being used in various fields.

What kind of person should take this course:

This course is a prefect match for anyone who is curious, skeptical or interested in the Digital and AI world, wanting to discover its uses and the hidden risks, biases and dark spots within it.

Reflecting on digital tools we learned about in this course.

One of my favorite tools which we learned in class is Gemini Canvas. I have used it in the narrative games assignment to help write the code for the game and it was very useful. I liked how the interface is a dynamic split screen; on the left you write your input and it shows up on the right whether in a HTML website or google document form. What was nice is that I could go through the code and edit it and preview it as well. I have already started and intend to use it in the future. Academically, I will use it in my data science class to debug my code and to preview it. Additionally, I plan to use it professionally to write code for algorithmic trading as I have mentioned before as well as use it to create excel sheets for data spreading and financial modeling.

Another tool which I liked using is Google NotebookLM. This tool is excellent because you input a file and ask a question and the tool answers your question using only the specified documents or links. In my experience this has eliminated AI hallucinations and ensures that all the data is from the file I provided avoiding external sources. Moreover, you can ask it to create quizzes, slide-decks, flashcards, infographics and so much more using the uploaded files. I have already used this in both my marketing and data science class to create quizzes to test myself on the topics coming in the exam. I could also use this tool in my professional life to create business proposal slide decks and other presentations I may need.

A third tool we learned about in class was Elicit AI. This tool is great for advanced research. It acts sort of like a search engine providing you with academic sources on a given topic. It also provides all of the sources it found in a table where you can add columns comparing the sample size, limitations and other variables across the different papers. I think that I will mainly use this tool during university to find credible and peer reviewed sources. What I didn’t really like about the tool is that it doesn’t create output in a similar fashion to ChatGPT and Gemini. I usually want an AI tool which can write out paragraphs instead of just providing sources and summaries.

A fourth digital tool was the interactive classroom where our class took place. This classroom was filled with 6 interactive projectors which we used at the start of most classes in some sort of activity. We would be invited to get up and answer the questions on the 6 boards when we entered the class which was a nice starter for every session. I honestly whish I could take all my classes in these rooms as they add so much to the learning experience. Moreover, the movable seating arrangement in the class with the spinning chairs enabled us to sit in groups and in a circle which encouraged discussion among students. I also appreciated the spinning chairs as I have a difficulty staying still for a long time so I could move a bit.

A fifth really important tool was the course website (reflect.creativitycourse.org). I thoroughly enjoyed this website as I could see the blog posts of my peers and see what they thought about the reading or video we were assigned to reflect on. It was really entertaining to play out the narrative games of my peers and see what they’ve been working on.

Reflecting on the intercultural experiences

During this course we had three main intercultural experiences. The first is the Tahrir campus trip and as mentioned earlier it involved meeting with international students studying Arabic in Egypt. It was honestly my favorite class and I wish we could have repeated it. I feel like we needed more time with the students, maybe we could have made it a weekly thing. The second experience was the Soliya experience which involved attending 5 weekly online sessions where I would interact with students across the world. The students came from various countries such as Italy, Morrocco, Tunisia and the United States. This helped bring a lot of diverse perspectives on the various topics we were discussing such as ruling systems, politics and current conflicts. However, I feel that as the sessions went on less people were involved in the discussion and were less likely to even attend the sessions. This makes our interactions a lot less deep and resulted in a lot of awkward silence. Maybe if people were keener on attending the sessions this could have added more to my learning. Another experience was the Equity Bound session on Somatic Healing. The session involved breathing and grounding techniques which we could use during our daily life at points of hyperarousal and hypoarousal. I honestly felt like this session couldn’t have came at a better time. During the semester I am constantly feeling stress; being given the tools to help soothe my anxiety was very helpful. I wish there would have been other sessions about somatic healing as I feel that it is something everyone can benefit from. A lot of the techniques she mentioned I still use to this day such as tapping and co-regulation.

Infographic

I have created bellow an infographic for this reflection paper as nice application of the AI tool NotebookLM which I have mentioned above.

AI disclosure statement: AI was not used in any part of the written reflection. It was only used to create the infographic; I wrote out the reflection and used NotebookLM to create it. Link for NotebookLM