1. What were the most impactful learning experiences for me in this course? (whether I gained knowledge, skills or attitudes), and what specifically helped me learn it (think of this as “significant moments” where in-class activities, interactions, readings, videos, assignments, etc promoted learning): (3-4 points)
    1. So I’m sure you have heard/read me talk about this before, but the first tourism assignment with the GCC group was a really meaningful self-learning experience b/c I really did not understand this part of myself. In case you need a refresher, I came to the realization that when I think of other countries, I think of them in a very selfish way and without considering the local people and their culture and this has prompted a lot of self reflection. I spoke about this in great detail in the intercultural reflection post I made.
    2. For academic life I will definitely be using a lot of the AI tools that I was exposed to in this course. For instance I had never used Gemini, Keenious I had never heard of, multiple AI tools. In particular I will be using Perplexity’s Deep research in the future, I was really really shocked at how well that worked.
    3. In my social life I have to say that nothing comes to mind that I would use from this course, most likely b/c I did not participate in the activities that could push you socially through foreign interaction like Soliya and the GCC Zoom. If I had to say one thing, I would say that the course promotes a way in which to interact with people, where you try and be aware of your own biases and maybe preconceptions you may have about cultural differences. One of the activities that promoted that type of thinking was our discussion about the “I am x, but…” video. I found that I was offended by the Muslim clips b/c I felt like they were trying to say “I’m one of the good ones” and kind of paint other Muslims as backwards, but I was completely unfazed about the Christian clips, which I think means that there is a level of critical thinking and empathy I have when dealing with people from my culture that I don’t have with others. B/c if I couldn’t recognize the same issues I had with the Islamic clips in the Christian clips, then clearly there was something I wasn’t doing right. So I think thinking about your own biases when dealing with others is something thats front of mind when you take this course, and another thing is the idea of being aware other people’s needs as it pertains to accessibility. Our classmate Hager is the first visually impaired person I have ever interacted with and the way Dr. Maha always emphasized the importance of making sure our work was accessible for her was something I took to heart and something I will be applying if ever I find myself interacting with someone who requires particular things to be able access media or anything else.
    4. There are two things I have for the professional life:
      1. I will definitely be much more cognizant of copyright licenses. Ever since we talked about it in class I have been seeing and taking note of the copyright license of the media I interact with and its pretty eye opening b/c seemingly every piece of media has these licenses attached and it tells you more about the media/product as well as the creator of that media. For instance a math tutor I follow online makes all of their courses CC BY, meaning that you can use his courses and share them as long as you aren’t profiting off of them and as long as its for education which made me really respect him. But as someone who wants to release creative work (I am an aspiring filmmaker when I have the time to be) its something that I now have in my head and something that I want to be aware of before releasing work.
      2. The ikigai. I really have to say I found the ikigai very dumb and trivial when the concept was first explained and I felt like this is just one of those hunky-dory holistic things you do in core classes and stuff like that. But during this semester, which has been incredibly difficult on me academically, I had a moment where I really just stopped and took stock of what I’m doing and where I’m going. I needed to really understand if I want to continue on the engineering path and what that entails, and after thinking about it for like an hour, I actually searched up the ikigai concept and looked into it again and I used it as an initial framework to think through my academic existential crisis. And I went through step by step, what am I good at, what am I passionate about, what does the world need, etc. Now after a bit I abandoned this framework b/c I felt like it didn’t offer a certain realism I felt I needed in that moment, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t helpful. Its an approach to thinking about your career that I will definitely keep in mind in the future, as I still don’t really know where I’m going.

 

  1. If I were to show someone my learning in this course, I would use these three things that I created (i.e. assignments, blogposts, etc) because…. (3 points):
    1. Intercultural Reflection
    2. Ikigai Assignment (I think this assignment was one of the ones we sent on the group)
    3.  My game
      1. So I would show them the intercultural reflection b/c I think it covers alot of what the course has to offer
      2. I would show them the ikigai assignment, bc not only was it beneficial for me I think it represents that in this course you learn about things you may have never heard about and that are out of the box, but have meaning.
      3. I would show the game for similar reasons to number 2, b/c the game was not only out of the box, it really forces you to think in a very logical and sequential manner when you design the scenarios, which I found very valuable. Aside from that, I’m very porud of how mine turned out.
  2. If I could change 2-3 things about the course to improve it, I would change these things… (explain how) (2-3 points)
    1. I would want us to go more in depth in the subject of AI’s effects on the environment b/c I really think that this is one of the highest priority things that people need to learn about and be aware of in the AI era.
    2. I think I would do the fact checking activity a little earlier in the course b/c I think it could lead to more learning on the topic of fact checking and understanding how to be more critical of media in the age of AI.
  3. In one sentence: What kind of person should take this course? (1 point) I think anyone with an open mind should take this course.
  4. Reflect on the tools we learned about in this course. Which ones did I like, and how I might use them in the future personally, academically or professionally? Which ones did I not like and why? (4 points) [note, make sure AI and the classroom technology itself is among the tools you reflect on for a total of 5 different tools] So I really loved Perplexity Deep Search and Google Notebook LM. Perplexity DS was really impressive to me, it found a lot of high quality papers (many of which I had already used in my project) and did so super quickly. When I was researching for my RHET 1020 paper it took me hours to finally find all the sources I did, had I used Perplexity at the time it would have made my life so much easier. Google Notebook LM was an AI tool that I had already heard about but never used when I saw it on the google doc for exploring AI tools. I looked through the document and did a brief search about each AI tool before choosing perplexity  and keenious, but Google Notebook caught my eye b/c a friend of mine had mentioned it before and the description on google was claiming to use AI in a way I hadn’t seen before. So in studying for my physics midterm I tried to use Notebook LM to study and found mixed results. On the one hand, it is super useful to mitigate AI hallucination and making sure that the answers given are always on topic and not ahead of your knowledge by feeding the AI the data from which it will answer. This is a great idea. But, I found Notebook to follow the sources too closely. I was feeding Notebook LM the powerpoints from the course not b/c I was too lazy to read them myself, it was b/c I needed help understanding them. So when I ask questions, I don’t want to see paraphrases of the slides themselves that I already don’t understand. I wish that the Notebook still made use of the fact that its an LLM and recognized the topics I was learning (and the level at which I am learning them) and used online sources to supplement and improve upon the material I provided it. That was the negative, but what was super positive (and why I will continue to use this tool even with its drawbacks) is its ability to replicate the exam style questions. It was able to generate me great questions and allow me to control their difficulty and which topics they focused on in a way that I think really helped my studying. So yeah I love Notebook and Perplexity Deep Search. Another tool I found helpful that I was exposed to was Gemini, I had never thought to use it before b/c why use a different LLM if you already use chatgpt, but when I heard in the class discussions the way Gemini differed from CGPT it made me want to use it. So I did, and I was definitley impressed. It solves physics and math problems much better than CGPT and allows you to upload as many photos as you want, which I found super useful, and its def part of my AI toolkit now. I also used scispace a little, but incredibly sparingly, I think it will be useful in the future though. As for the in class technology I wanted to talk about the boards. I thought about the boards alot across the semester for some reason, I mean they’re pretty novel so I guess it makes sense. But I was thought to myself how valuable are these really, and to be 100% honest I think they were overkill. On the one hand, I think they increased engagement. When you have one board at the front of the class and all of us are facing it, its very easy to space out and lose focus, but with multiple boards around you it really catches and holds your attention much better. Also b/c there is more than one board, it allows us to be able to sit in a circle which I think increased participation and in general made the classes vibes feel better for reasons I can’t really articulate. But on the other hand I felt like the activities where we write on the board and stuff like that were more gimmicky than anything, but that could’ve been just me. Maybe those particular activities didn’t interest me, b/c for the activity where we had to fact check the thing on the board and then present our findings was REALLY fun for me, but it was an exception. Outside of having a board on either side of the room, I felt like the boards weren’t really useful. But definitley having two of those boards on either side is a positive, 6 is just overkill though I think. At least for this class.
  5. (GCC Reflection) Unfortunately I did not attend the GCC session as I had practice that day so I don’t have much to say for that. There have been small GCC activities since then like voluntourism, but I don’t think that these interactions are really beneficial if you didn’t attend the zoom b/c you don’t really know the person in the group with you as you would have if you were in the zoom. Also there isn’t much interaction in general outside of the zoom session. If thats a goal of the GCC activities outside of just the zoom session, then I think they should be replaced with a group project or something where you work with someone from the other university so that you actually do interact and learn through those interactions.