A conversation between my past self before taking the course and my current self after taking the course:

Hello everyone, are you ready to listen to my journey during the course of AI literacy, digital learning, and intercultural learning? This is a story of my trip during the Fall 2025 semester, when I studied this course. This story will be narrated by my current self to my past self as a journey to understand how I was changed and what knowledge and experience I have gained after taking this course.

My past self, could you tell me, Hager, about what the most impactful learning experiences were for you in this course? And what specifically helped you learn it?

About myself: regarding games and activities: I was a person who underestimated all types of games, especially the modern games we have today, because they are always introduced negatively, such as silly electronic games that destroy youth mentality and waste their time without gaining any benefit from them. Additionally, my brother’s passion for these types of games made me hate them more, as he always ignores his studies and wastes his time either playing with his friends or playing online games. Since my early age, I have experienced silly or meaningless games when I played with my peers or tried online games. This course has helped me change my attitude towards games and see them from a different angle. Although I am fully convinced that everything can be positive or negative depending on how we use it, I did not give myself the chance to think about this in games. In this course, I have experienced games where we learn how to express ourselves, how to empathize with others, and how to challenge our perspectives or attitudes. My past self replied, ” Of course, I of course know all of that, so could you give me examples of these games? My current self replied, absolutely, let’s start with Sucrose: in this game, I had to answer challenging personal questions, and I have only one chance to choose not to answer. And since most of the questions were challenging for me, I did not know when to choose not to answer; therefore, I had to go out of my comfort zone and answer questions I did not feel comfortable answering. My past self, so how did you benefit from this game? My current self taught me that there are some moments in life when we have to answer challenging questions to know what decision to take honestly without leaving in ignorance. We should play it from an early age to teach ourselves how to face challenging moments in our lives and how to be honest with ourselves and know the answer to every question. My past self, oh, it sounds so interesting and meaningful. Do you have other examples? My current self, Ya, certainly, privilege walk game, when we had to put ourselves in others’ places to feel the same feelings and live the same experience. What was also unique about this game is that I played the role of a Christian Palestinian female, which was meaningful for me, as I am already sympathetic to Palestinians and what happens with their issue since 1948. What benefit I got from this game is to imagine being in the same suffering as someone in life and sense the same feelings as them, just to be able to emotionally interact with this person. Additionally, it taught me that we should not judge others’ emotions or feelings if we cannot imagine what they live. A game like this, if we normalize it between school and university students, will completely change how people view and interact in this world and with others. It will help people feel the injustice that their brothers and sisters face in this world and not stay silent while their siblings are suffering on the other side. It looks like a simple game; however, in fact, it might have a huge impact on the mentality of youth, especially young children who still need to play.

My past self, oh, I did not imagine that only a game could have all this effect on people’s mentality; I thought they were all silly and useless. Now, could you tell me about your academic life? My current self replied, of course, there is a lot to say about my academic life. Let’s focus first on AI learning: I have never thought that I would one day discuss AI in this depth, especially in an academic course at my university. Since I joined this university, AI was something prohibited, and its name raised a lot of controversy. Discussing AI in flexibility is one of the huge advantages of this course. My past self, Okay Okay, could you tell me what is special about AI in this course? My current self, Ya Ya, I am going to tell you, do not be impatient like that. First thing, I learned that AI is inevitably important in our age, especially when it is developing rapidly and dominating in many fields. For example, when I did the assignment on AI in my profession and interviewed 2 professors in my field, MICT, I discovered that I should be an expert in using AI in my field, besides enhancing my knowledge through my curriculum. I should not be ignorant about AI and should not always do all tasks manually. This approach will undoubtedly leave me behind in my future career and not benefit from the new technologies. Furthermore, I want to reflect on the biases of AI, which was never taught in any course. I learned that I cannot fully depend on AI blindly without being judgmental, as AI sometimes gives vague or generic answers, and I have practically experienced this in this course while designing my AI game, when AI gave me generic scenarios, for example. Also, I learned that AI is established and developed by Western culture; therefore, its content and datasets are, of course, biased towards other cultures sometimes. So I should be careful when taking information from it.

My past self, could you tell me how you benefit from your course socially? My current self, actually, the intercultural part of this course helped me develop my social interactions, especially in Soliya, when I interacted with people from different backgrounds, and even their beliefs are totally different from mine. This course has taught me to be brave and express my opinion openly, while at the same time respecting others’ views if I do not agree with them. I also want to focus on 2 videos that we watched in class. The first one was about I am … but I do not. This video gave me a sense of frustration, as most of the Arabs or Muslims in this video were expressing the stereotypes raised about them by confirming their existence. On the other hand, other cultures had different attitudes, some of them were negative, and some of them were positive. Unlike Muslims, unfortunately. This video showed me the strength of media and how it can affect stereotyping even among the stereotyped group itself. Instead, I learned from this video that we should not confirm stereotypes about ourselves and should not act as defenders against stereotypes as if they are real and we are trying to overcome them. Another video about voluntarism caught my attention, as I have always been thinking about volunteering as something positive. I did not imagine that such kind work could be horrible sometimes. Why can we limit such work to a specific category of people, while the other nations are served through this voluntarism? I mean, when voluntarism was shown in the video, white people who perform this voluntarism in African or asian countries and people from their nations are shown as needy and poor. Also, I hate the idea of children being emotionally attached to volunteers who might not meet them again because they are coming from another country. This has taught me to choose carefully the volunteering activity that I want to embark on.

My past self, that sounds so deep. Could you tell me about how you are going to apply what you have learned in this course in your career life? My current self, absolutely, I can combine all the previous skills, like the academic and social, to help me pursue my future career. When I have strong abilities in judging and criticising, this helps me reflect on my working experience critically and find solutions to any issues I face. Additionally, learning about various cultures qualifies me to deal with people with diverse backgrounds and participate in different groups, especially if my future career requires me to work with people globally. My past self, I really love this change, and I did not expect this huge difference in your personality.

Let’s move to another topic: are there any assignments, projects, or any content you have done in this course, and you would like to show to someone? My current self, definitely, I would like to show my friends or the upcoming students in this course my game about overcoming depression for refugees. Although it was not perfect, I loved that I had the experience of designing my own game using my ideas and emotions. This game shows my deep empathy towards our brothers and sisters in the Arab world and reflects on their suffering. I hope I could do this game in a better way than one that truly reflects the conditions our brothers and sisters live in. Also, I encourage such types of games that teach people about others’ suffering and help them empathise with them. These kinds of games also teach people who are not aware of issues of refugees about their pain and to overcome the cruelty of some nations towards people like Palestinians. Another work I have created and would like to show someone is an AI in my profession project. I have really benefited from interviewing professors in my discipline, and I think the information I have gained not only can benefit me in my field but they are generally beneficial as we live in a world where we need to master AI skills in order to adapt and find jobs for us. Moreover, I am personally willing to show my reflection on the reading of “Finding Truth and Beauty” to other people to show them the meaningful and impactful phrases that she mentioned about her suffering and her family. These words impacted me personally and affected my emotions; therefore, I think it will impact other people as well and learn them how other people like them in this world cannot even live in their hometowns due to some thieves and occupiers. It will boost in people the sense of dignity towards themselves and their lands by showing that brave people are those who do not fear death at the expense of their humanity and dignity.

My past self, is there anything you would like to change about this course? My current self, yes, I have only 2 things I did not know how to adapt to just for me. First, I did not like being graded based on how personal my reflection was, personal or not, because sometimes people are unable to express their personal emotions or even do not react personally with the content of the course. Additionally, a person sometimes focuses more on the academic side without reflecting on the personal part. Therefore, not all personal responses are possible. Another thing is just a suggestion: can this course include outdoor activities besides the usual in-class activities, because I think this course aims at more in-depth learning beyond the academic setting? Therefore, I think this idea is interesting and will add more joy to the atmosphere of the class.

My past self, could you say in one sentence what kind of person is qualified to take this course in the future? My current self replied, a person who is passionate about learning, curious, deep, and enthusiastic can perfectly fit in this course.

My past self, I think you have used many tools in this course, so could you tell me which tools you liked and whether you are going to use them again in the future, either in your personal, professional, or academic life? My current self, yes, I have exposed to many tools like some AI tools, either in class or in AI research tools assignments, Slack, and Soliya. I would like to talk about the AI drawing tool that we have used in class. I really loved the idea of giving the AI data and instructions to do what we want from scratch. It gave us the experience of AI developers to do the same and train an AI tool. Although I was not able to do it myself due to accessibility issues, I hope I can find similar AI tools that perform accessible tasks for me to try them myself. I am personally interested in AI and would like to have experience in this field. Academically, I want to develop my technical skills, especially with AI, because it is dominant now in almost all jobs, and my field requires me to be qualified and knowledgeable about AI advancements. Another tool I really enjoy and love the idea of is Slack: the idea of having a platform for communication between us as a class and colleagues without violating our privacy by sharing numbers is a great idea, and I hope that in the future I could suggest the same platform for my professors for easier and safer communication. Also, the organisation of the platform by specializing different chats for different preferences saves time and reduces confusion. Regarding the AI tools I have used in exploring different AI research tools, it was a modern and great idea for me, as I have never used them in any of my previous research. It added knowledge for me and will save me time in doing research. I loved ChatGPT’s deep research since it was too easy and accessible to find primary and secondary sources for my research topic. Despite its weaknesses in summarising sources, its flexibility and speed surprised me and make it a future option in doing research. Perplexity, deep research was also a strong accessible tool to find academic sources for research. I loved its accuracy and organisation in listing sources and summarising their key findings. It will help me in the future when doing research and finding credible sources, in case I need any. The last platform I would like to reflect on is Soliya. I not only benefited from the connect program we had, but I also said in the end-of-program survey of the program that I would like to have internships with Soliya to benefit from its experience and train myself in global communication. I believe this will enhance my professionalism and help me overcome my shyness in order to prepare me for my future career. My past self, are there other tools that you did not like in the class? My current self, it is not about liking or disliking; however, I wanted to use the tools suggested by my professor to create my game, as they were creative and fast to use; however, some of them were not accessible to me, like Gemini Canvas. I hope these tools are developed further in the future to give people with disabilities the opportunity to use and benefit from them.

My past self, I heard that this course includes global connections with other students around the globe. Could you tell me about your experience in this aspect? My current self, certainly, at first, we had the advantage to participate in a session with Kenyon College students and talk about ourselves in a CV that describes our personal life, not our academic or professional life. I enjoyed my session particularly because I was with my best friend,               Malak, and another kind girl from Kenyon College. Jan., we had an interesting discussion, knowing about each other, exchanging ideas. Also, we did an assignment with our colleagues from Kenyon College by describing images or memories and reflecting personally on them. Although I did not enjoy this assignment as I do not like sharing personal stuff about myself, I was happy to know more about my friends’ preferences and get a little bit out of my comfort zone.

I have to include all links for the materials discussed in the reflection; however, it was so difficult and took long time. therefore, I have only included the ones which I found.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeLrJuhegBNO3TgPIW3DG1lvEgQ462YTJWJlg1drZzdDUe9Og/viewform?usp=header https://reflect.creativitycourse.org/write?wid=3891&tk=c55da53429bb2ce423b5868aa23e859f72740b7f