The Final Reflection – Marwan Madkour

Subject: Welcome to CORE 2096 – A Guide to Thriving in the Age of AI

Dear Future CORE 2096 Student,

If you are reading this, you are probably wondering what you just signed up for. As a graduating Finance senior who just finished this exact journey, let me be the first to welcome you to “Digital Literacies in an Intercultural Context.”

When I first walked into the SSE CP18 classroom, I thought this was just going to be a tech class where we learned how to prompt ChatGPT to do our homework. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This course is focused on who you are, how you interact with the world, and how technology amplifies both the best and worst of humanity. Here is my reflection on the journey, framed as a guide to help you navigate it.

  1. The Most Impactful Learning Experiences

Throughout the semester, my learning went above and beyond just gaining digital skills. Four different aspects of my personal life saw significant changes:

  • About Myself: Growing up with Belgian citizenship, born in the UAE, and living in Egypt with Egyptian parents, I always thought I was naturally open-minded. However, watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” really made me look at my own biases. I realized that because I’m so close to my own culture, I often jump to stereotypical conclusions about others. This course taught me to pause and question the “single stories” I hold about others.
  • In My Academic Life: The module on Fake News changed how I extract information. During one of our breakout room activities, we evaluated the topic “Islam in Ireland” which claimed that the majority of Irish people are Muslims. To be honest, I no longer take statistical or AI-generated facts; I have to investigate by pulling out the original source. 
  • In My Social Life: The intercultural communication, especially through the Soliya Connect Program, was life-changing. Coming into it, I was worried about stepping out of my comfort zone. But discussing sensitive topics, such as how wars in Iran or Ukraine have affected us, taught me a huge difference between trying to win a debate and understanding each other’s point of view through a dialogue. For example, in the Iran vs USA war, we discussed how the war in Iran impacts our lives, and everyone in the breakout room had a different perspective. It truly built my ability to show empathy. While Soliya was a great idea, my group was mostly other Arab students. To make the conversations more impactful, the program should bring in a better mix of students from the USA, Europe, and other regions so we can hear different global perspectives. 
  • In My Career: As a Finance major, the most meaningful moment was investigating AI’s actual role in the corporate world. My interviews with Prof. Noah Farhadi and CI Capital professionals completely changed how I thought of AI in the field of finance. I discovered that AI is not an actual decision-maker but an “automotive and efficiency” tool for tasks like spreading financial statements. This relaxed my anxiety regarding the possibility that humans might be replaced by machines and taught me that human judgment, risk management, and critical thinking remain my greatest career assets.

 

  1. My Proudest Creations

If I were to show a future employer or a friend what I actually learned in this course, I would point them straight to my blog. Here are the three most favourite blogs:

  • AI in Your Profession Assignment – Finance
    • This assignment connected what I’m learning in class to my future career. By talking to industry experts, I looked past the media hype and learned how AI is actually being used in banking and investing today.
  • Critical Perspective on AI
    • This post perfectly sums up what I learned about AI. Using ideas from the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast and the short film Model Employee, I looked at how companies use AI to spy on and exploit workers. It shows that I can look past what technology can do and really think about its impact on ethics and privacy.
  • Final Game Draft: Stress Management – The Decision Game
    • I created a 10-scenario game that challenges players to balance their academics, finances, and mental health. It was a creative way to explore student well-being, which showed players the true cost of how they spend their time. To me, it was a financial way of looking at self-care.
  1. Reflecting on Our Digital Tools

In a digital literacies class, here is my honest opinion on the digital tools we used in this class:

  1. Generative AI (ChatGPT/Gemini): I used AI a lot to help write the storylines and create the DALL-E 3 images for my game. In the future, I plan to use it at work as a “co-pilot” for coding and financial modeling, while always double-checking the results myself. I also used ChatGPT for this reflection to create the advertising infographics attached below.
  2. WordPress / Course Blog: Building this blog was really rewarding. Moving forward, I want to use a blog to publish my finance work and show it to future employers as a digital portfolio.
  3. The Syrian Refugee Game: This game was incredibly powerful. Playing as a woman trapped in a war zone, I saw how the constant bombings destroyed lives and killed so many people. It really showed me how miserable and terrifying life is for people in Syria.
  4. Social Reading: While reading together online sounds like a good idea, it was just too overwhelming in practice. Having 20 students highlighting and commenting on the same article at the same time made the page way too crowded. It distracted me from what the author was actually saying. I prefer reading on my own first, and then talking about it as a class.
  5. Classroom Furniture & Screens: The physical classroom tech was awesome. Having wheels on the chairs and interactive screens everywhere got rid of the old lecture setup. It made our group discussions feel smooth and easy.
  1. Improving the Course

While the course was fantastic, if I were the professor, I would change a couple of things:

  1. Add a Separate Module on Workplace Monitoring: The Model Employee video showed some shocking things about workplace tracking. I think juniors and seniors need at least two lectures on digital rights at work. We should understand how companies monitor employees before we graduate into our future careers.
  2. Add More Live Sessions for Somatic Healing: We only had one live session this semester, which focused on somatic healing. It was incredibly helpful to actually practice connecting our bodies and minds in real-time, especially when discussing heavy global issues. We need more of these live, interactive sessions throughout the course. It would help us better process the topics presented in class.
  1. Who Should Take This Course?

If you want to step out of your comfort zone and learn how to use technology instead of letting it control you, this course is for you.

Best of luck,
 Marwan Madkour
 Senior, Finance Major, AUC