In this interview, Past Salma is interviewing Present Salma about her experience in the course CORE 2096.

Past Salma: Hi, Present Salma. I hope you enjoyed your semester taking CORE 2095. Through this interview, I am going to ask you some questions about your experience in this course, as I am curious to hear your feedback about the course. I am curious to know whether you regret taking the course or not.

Present Salma: Hi, Past Salma. That sounds interesting. I am glad to share my experience with you.

Section 1 – Learning Experiences

Past Salma: I will ask you a question, and I want you to be honest with me. For me, I registered for this course because I knew it was interactive, so I thought there would not be too much work, and it would be easy. After taking this course, I want to hear from you. Is it really useful, or is it one of the courses that students register for an easy A?

Present Salma: Well, to be honest, it was not easy. The course was not hard, but it was challenging for me because I always had to engage with the course content and properly understand its learning outcomes to learn and reflect on them later. Therefore, it was very informative on multiple sides.

Past Salma: Can you engage more? Give me some examples of your learning experience from different sides.

Present Salma: On the personal side, after watching Mays Imad’s video “How is Your Heart?”, I learned to take care of myself and not ignore my traumas and stresses. Ignoring them will cause long-term consequences that will affect my physical and mental health, leading to difficulties in performing daily tasks. As you know, previously, I always felt guilty when I took a break while I was busy doing multiple tasks, and that affected my mental health and made me unable to either take a break or function well. But now, I have started to appreciate my breaks. I started to give myself breaks, even for multiple days if I needed, just to have the power and energy to continue.

Past Salma: Wow, I really appreciate that you watched this video because I remember having continuous anxiety in every semester. What about the academic side?

Present Salma: From the academic side, after hearing the “Don’t Fall for the AI Hype” podcast, I got introduced to some of the AI dark sides that I did not know before, leading me to be more careful and avoid over-reliance on AI blindly. The podcast helped me to realize that AI tools are not always fair and accurate. As I have mentioned earlier in “Critical Perspective on AI”, AI tools are marketing tools more than precise scientific tools. Companies tend to market the AI tools as tools that are capable of replacing human minds, while in reality, they cannot understand the human mind and hallucinate a lot. And that is proved through our conversations with AI tools, like ChatGPT, where it takes us a lot of time and explanations to ask the AI tool to perform a simple task. Leading to the conclusion that AI is not as smart as we think and lacks a precise scientific base. Also, these AI tools reflect the society’s racism and inequality by providing biased responses that are affected by their developers. As a result, I realized that AI tools are usually biased, inaccurate, and misleading; however, it seems to be very convincing to us. All of these imperfections made me rethink using AI in some of the tasks. For example, I used to give ChatGPT some of the data sheets that I generated to give me feedback on them, and these data sheets are written on paper that includes some of my personal information. But now, I do not feel safe uploading any documents that include any of my personal data because I realized that AI tools are not self-automated as companies say. Companies take advantage by putting the blame on AI, acting as if the AI is making decisions independently, while it is not. In other words, all AI tools are partially monitored by humans whom I do not know. Furthermore, they still have multiple scientific and technological limitations more than I thought. That is why I became unable to trust the AI tools scientific base and be selective in the types of tasks that I use AI for.

Past Salma: I am really shocked by all of this information. I used to imagine AI tools as robots that would occupy the world in the future, like in the movies, but it sounds impossible for that to happen. So, in other words, based on what you said, AI tools will always be humans’ assistants who can make mistakes, so I should not rely completely on them, because they will never be smarter than humans. What about your learning experience in social life?

Present Salma: One of the most crucial social experiences that I had was playing with the Empathy toy because I experienced how blind people feel. In one of the university courses, I met my first blind colleague. I used to help her with everything, and she told me some of the stories about how some people unintentionally annoy her. At that time, I thought that I understood her feelings, but later on, when I played with the empathy toy, I understood how she truly felt as a blind person. I understood the real meaning of being blind. While playing the game, I was the blind person who was trying to build a specific shape. When I first became blindfolded, I suddenly felt isolated from everything around me and felt lonely. I did not know whether people were looking at me or not, which was very awkward. And when I started building the shape, it required me more effort than usual; I noticed that I had to pay more attention to my body than before. I needed to use other various senses to understand the things around me. Facing this experience made me feel that all blind people are really strong people; it is really hard to deal with the world around you without being able to see it. It requires a lot of effort and energy to deal with this world. This social experience made me feel more thankful to God, while respecting blind people more and seeing them as heroes.

Past Salma: What about your learning experience that will help you in your Career?

Present Salma: Unexpectedly, one of the TED talks that helped in my career development is “How Language Shapes the Way We Think” TED Talk; I know it seems a little strange to be useful for my career development because the TED talk is not related to career development at all. After graduation, I want to work in a multinational oil and gas service company, like SLB. That means if I get accepted into a company like SLB, I will be dealing with multiple foreign clients. As a person who is not excellent in English speaking, previously, I used to think that my current English-speaking skills would be enough for work. But, after watching the TED talk, I learned that talking in our languages is not only a way of communication, but also a way to transmit knowledge across minds. When we speak in our language, we do not always transmit the exact meaning of our words. Each language has its own idioms that send hidden messages to others who speak the same language. In other words, our language shapes the way we think. So, when I noticed these facts from the TED talk, I realized that limited fluency in English could create misunderstandings during professional interactions with foreign clients, leading to multiple difficulties at work. As a result, I become more motivated to improve my skills to become more effective in an international work environment. Also, throughout the course, I got introduced to multiple AI research tools, like Elicit, that would help me in my research career.

Past Salma: That sounds interesting!

Section 2 – Best Assignments

Past Salma: I am sure you have already done a lot of assignments during this semester. Out of everything you created, is there anything special and meaningful to you?

Present Salma: Surprisingly, yes. There were three of the assignments that were special to me because they reflected my development throughout the course. Furthermore, they are unique assignments as I have not created things similar before.

Past Salma: Wow, I became very excited to hear from you. Tell me about the first one.

Present Salma: The first assignment was the ALTCV. In this assignment, we were asked to create a non-academic CV that represents who we are without restrictions, in addition to all the achievements that cannot be written in a normal CV. In this assignment, I was very confused about how to create my ALTCV and what I am really proud of to put in my ALTCV. As a person, I like creating memes a lot, so I decided to create a funny and creative ALTCV. Finally, I created an ALTCV that has the same structure as the academic CV, but with funny content representing who I really am and what I am proud of. To be honest, my professor did not agree a lot with the idea that I used the academic CV format, but for me, I was so proud of what I created. As a person, I like formality, so I tried to be creative and unexpected by using the normal format but with my own touch. I was so proud of my ALTCV because it represented who I really am with the format that suited me and my identity. It gave me the freedom to present who I am without restrictions; therefore, it was one of my favorite assignments. Through this assignment, I learned how to present myself and tell my story in creative ways.

Past Salma: What about the second one?

Present Salma: The second assignment was ” my digital narrative game ” assignment. This assignment was also challenging for me because I felt confused about the type of game that I was going to generate. In this assignment, we are asked to use our own experience or our research to generate a game that can raise awareness or advocate for a topic we are interested in. As a person who is interested in psychology, I chose my topic to be about being optimistic for my first draft. Through my life experience, I faced a lot of tough moments, and at that time, I needed someone to remind me that there is always hope. We are always trying to be optimistic; nevertheless, sometimes we forget our hope and become unable to be optimistic again. Therefore, I wanted to be the person who reminds people that there is always good in challenges. In the final draft, while I was modifying my game, I decided to convert my topic from just encouraging people to be positive to being optimistic and dealing properly with life challenges through giving real-life advice. Sometimes, people face multiple situations that require decision-making, but they are unsure of the proper course of action. Therefore, I decided to include some real-life advice based on my own experience and other people’s experiences. Even though I made this game to help others stay optimistic and give them advice, it also helped me. While I was reminding others to be optimistic, I was also reminding myself to look at the positive side of every situation. Focusing on your hardships will only lead you to live in a bubble, isolated from the world and the positive energy. We are living on Earth for a very short time compared to life after death; therefore, life’s difficulties are not worth your suffering. Additionally, I learned how to generate a digital game and how to convert code into a webpage; it took me some time to learn how to generate a webpage, but after that, I found it so easy to create.

Past Salma: To be honest, I am really proud of you because you were able to overcome your life challenges and you continued trying to help others. Also, I am proud because you created a real digital game. I used to think it was very difficult to create a digital game, and I thought it required a lot of coding experience, but you exceeded my expectations. Good job! Now, tell me about the third assignment.

Present Salma: The third assignment that I enjoyed and learned from was the “AI in Your Profession” assignment. In this assignment, I interviewed two of my professors with different backgrounds about the AI applications in the oil and gas industry. Both of them gave me different answers. One of my professors focused on academics and talked about how AI is integrated into multiple software that are used for academic purposes. For example, Pipesim Software has an AI component that predicts flow rate based on your input data and physics-based equations, optimizes production, detects anomalies, and speeds up simulations by replacing equations with trained models. The other professor talked from a field engineer’s perspective and explained how the AI is used to fill the gaps between the well logging data and correct the missing. Through this assignment, I learned two things. First, I got introduced to AI applications in the petroleum engineering major, either academically or in industry. This assignment allowed me to learn about critical AI applications that undergraduates usually do not know. Second, I learned some techniques for interviewing someone, like being a good listener to give the speaker the space to share their knowledge freely. In addition to being selective in choosing the questions to avoid getting broad answers and ensure the engagement of the speaker. Furthermore, the questions should be open-ended to avoid directing or limiting the speaker’s ideas.

Past Salma: I am really surprised by the huge amount of knowledge and experience that you gained from just three assignments. That is supposed to be a very crucial course for everyone to take.

Section 3 – Course Improvements

Past Salma: So, according to all that I heard from you, do you want to say that the course is perfect?

Present Salma: Of course not, nothing is perfect. Even though many parts of the course were valuable, there were other parts that needed improvement.

Past Salma: Sounds Interesting! What do you think are the areas that need improvement?

Present Salma: I think the first thing that needs to be changed is the assignment distribution. During the semester, there were times when we did not have any assignments, and there were other times when we had multiple assignments together. For me, I was able to handle these assignments and do them properly, even though I was struggling with managing my time with other courses. Nevertheless, I am sure that there were peers who suffered from multiple assignments at the same time, and they were unable to complete these assignments properly. Humans are not the same; while some of them can work under pressure, others cannot. Therefore, if the assignments were equally distributed across the semester, it would be much easier to handle them.

Past Salma: Yes, I got your point. That means there may be some of the students who were not able to do their best in some of the assignments because they are stressed. Do you think there should be any other improvements?

Present Salma: There were some classes where we were doing some activities and watching videos without knowing the purpose of doing this activity, or what today’s class was about. To be honest, this was not always the case, but it happened multiple times. I remember that we sometimes watch some random videos, and we reflect on them quickly, and that’s it, without understanding the connection between this video and today’s topic. So, I think it would be better if there were a fixed topic or theme for every class to make it easier for students to get the main idea behind every activity.

Past Salma: This is a good idea. Any other changes?

Present Salma: Well, it is not actually a change, but an improvement for class discussions. I would recommend doing debate-style discussions for a more effective understanding of controversial ideas related to AI or any other topic. I know some class discussions are shifted to simple debates, but not a lot. I would recommend dividing the students into two groups, and each group is responsible for talking about an opposite argument on a specific topic. That will allow students to understand and engage more with the topic, think critically, and defend their perspectives respectfully. In addition to allowing students to understand the different perspectives.

Past Salma: I liked this idea. These discussions can also encourage quieter students to participate, as every student in each debate group will be responsible for presenting a specific point that represents their perspective.

Present Salma: Exactly!

Section 4 – Personalities Suitable for CORE 2096 Course

Past Salma: So now, in one sentence, I want you to tell me what kind of person should take this course? Be honest with me and tell me who this course is actually for?

Present Salma: I would say a person who likes interacting with different people, but at the same time, he has difficulties in taking the first step to talk with someone or has difficulties in opening discussions; I think this course would be very useful in helping him overcome the problem.

Past Salma: Wow, then I think it was really suitable for my personality.

Section 5 – Digital Tools

Past Salma: What about the digital tools that you used in this course? Did they actually help?

Present Salma: Well, this is a really good point for you to mention. Throughout the course, I was introduced to multiple new digital tools that I had not heard about before. There are various tools, like websites, AI tools, Research tools, games, or even platforms for our own class.

Past Salma: So, tell me about five digital tools that you used.

Present Salma: The first tool that was so helpful for me is Gemini. Before starting this course, I always believed that Gemini was not the best AI tool to use because when I tried to design a logo on it, it generated a very basic and not practical logo. However, after seeing my professor use Gemini a lot in this course, I decided to give it a chance and explore it further, and, unexpectedly, Gemini became one of my favorite AI tools. I liked Gemini features like deep research and canvas. And actually, I am planning to continue using them after finishing this course. I think both of them would be very helpful in projects because I can find trusted sources for the topics of my research. In addition to creating code and websites through Canvas to support in representing my ideas more clearly by implementing digital solutions to support my projects and research.

Past Salma: What about the second tool?

Present Salma: The second tool is actually a website, which is “Terms of Service Didn’t Read”. This is a website that summarizes the terms and conditions of the different applications and platforms that we use and provides a grade for them depending on the level of your data safety on them. For me, this is a brilliant website because all people always agree on terms and conditions without even reading them, because they are too long. I liked how it is really simple to know the terms and conditions of any website, without reading a lot of boring information that we usually do not understand. After using this website, I noticed that most of the huge platforms that we used to trust are not safe for our data, like Chrome and Facebook. These platforms can use your data without permission, or even when you delete something, it is not actually deleted, and this data is still stored on them somewhere. Therefore, I decided to always use this website before agreeing to any conditions because I was shocked by what I saw on this website. I think this website is a great opportunity to use for personal safety.

Past Salma: Oh my God, I used to fully trust the website. So, I think I need to be careful later on. What about the third tool?

Present Salma: The third tool is also a website, which is the “Contrast Checker” Website. This is a website where you can check the effect of colors on each other to identify which colors cannot be seen by color blind people. For example, if you write a test with a light color like baby blue, the background cannot also be a light color like white. Color blind people will have difficulty reading your text, and maybe they do not even notice your words. I liked how this website allows me to test the effect of different colors on each other to be careful in the future while designing or writing something. This website will actually be very helpful for my academic and professional life because I will use it while conducting any presentation, either in university or after graduation, to avoid choosing colors that are not comfortable or seen by color blind people.

Past Salma: Sounds helpful! Are there any tools that you did not like?

Present Salma: Well, I think I did not like Slack. Slack is a digital platform that we use for communication. To be more accurate, I did not feel that it was helpful. For me, it was my first time using this platform, and I had difficulties in the beginning to understand how it works. Nevertheless, the main problem that I faced was the difficulty in reaching my classmates. When I needed to ask my classmates about something, I sent them a message on Slack, and it took a lot of time to get an answer from them; some of them did not see my message at all. As we are not used to using Slack, sometimes we forget to open it, which is why it was hard to reach someone on Slack. I did not feel that Slack was practical, and I think a WhatsApp group will be much more helpful and better for us to get in contact with each other.

Past Salma: Well, you have mentioned a good point. I think also WhatsApp will be a better option because it will enable classmates to get in contact after finishing this course. What about the fifth digital tool?

Present Salma: In this course, I had played multiple digital narrative games before creating my own game. One of these games I liked a lot, which is “Orphan by Heart”. Through playing this game, I understood for the first time how to be an orphan. My mom was an orphan because her dad died when she was very young (i.e., but she was living with her family, mother, and siblings), so she used to tell me some stories about the difficulty of growing up without having a father, and I used to feel that I understood how orphans feel. However, when I played this game, I experienced terrible situations that orphans experience every day, which I had not noticed before. Growing up without having the freedom of choice or having real parents who actually care about you is really painful. The feeling that you do not have someone to care about you in your death is also painful. Playing this game is really important because people must understand how orphans actually feel to make people bring more attention to supporting orphans and giving them better life and education opportunities. That is why I liked this game; it made me think about how I can be an orphan’s supporter in the future.

Section 6 – Intercultural Experiences

Past Salma: Regarding the intercultural experiences that you had during the course, were they meaningful or just participation exercises? I know that intercultural experience is not the best for you. You like interactions with people, but you always feel nervous when you start a conversation with new people, especially if it is an online interaction. So, I think you did not like the intercultural experience in this course, especially Soliya and online sessions like Somatic Healing.

Present Salma: At this point, you are completely right. I felt so nervous before every new intercultural experience because I did not know the people I was going to interact with. I always felt pressured before every new experience, especially the online experience, because most of the time I do not see the people that are talking to me, and even if I am seeing them, I do not feel comfortable opening my camera at home. That’s why I did not feel interested in participating in the course’s intercultural experiences. However, my feedback after participating in them is completely different. Before the Tahrir visit, I thought that it was a boring experience that was full of some expected activities. The same as Soliya’s experience, I also thought that the sessions would be awkward with boring topics. However, after participation in both experiences, my personality and mindset started to change. I learned how to interact with people and start discussions without feeling awkward. I noticed that all of us were nervous about intercultural interactions, and that made me feel calmer and feel that I am not alone. We are all on the same boat, so there is actually nothing to fear. That is why I started to be more open with people, and through Soliya sessions, I started to talk more with my peers and get to know more about them every session. And actually, I made friends, and now I am in contact with some of my Soliya peers.

Past Salma: I am very proud of you because you have really achieved a lot in social interactions. Are there any other things you noticed about yourself?

Present Salma: Yes, to be honest, I noticed that I tend to judge people depending on their nationality. I noticed that I unconsciously got affected by what is happening in the world now, and how America is causing wars, and I started to stereotype Americans as people who support Israel and support wars and genocides. However, after the interactions in Tahrir and in Soliya, I met multiple Americans for the first time, and all of them are good people. I noticed that all of the Americans that I met were kind people, and none of them were supporting genocide. Also, I noticed that they are also emotionally and economically suffering from the world wars; they are just normal people like us. These experiences made me notice my hidden stereotypes, making me start to change myself and not to judge people.

Past Salma: Are there any experiences?

Present Salma: There are other online sessions I attended, like Somatic Healing. This session does not affect my personality because it was just a short session discussing a specific topic. However, I learned from somatic healing some tips to deal with my stress and anxiety through mind and body connections. These tips are helpful, especially in exams period. As I have discussed in Somatic Healing Reflection, I learnt that identifying the reason behind my stress is more important than searching for a method to release stress. For example, if I am scared or stressed, I try to find safety outside by doing activities that bring positive feelings to me, like organizing my room. But if the outside is scary and stressful, I bring attention to the inside, like doing the breathing activity. I understood the real meaning of the mind and body connection.

Past Salma: I think it was really helpful because it is my first-time hearing from someone about the importance of identifying your stress reasons. I think that is a crucial tip for everyone to know. Okay, Present Salma, that is the end of our interview. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us, and I am really proud of you because you were able to manage your time and learn a lot of new experiences in one semester, while you are also busy with other courses.

Present Salma: Thank you so much!