Final Course Reflection

Digital literacies was a completely new term to me, and the course was a unique and a different one. Before taking this course, I had no idea about digital literacies’ meaning and I was a little bit worried about the course at the beginning of the semester. However, it turned out to be something completely different, enjoyable and most importantly informative.

This course made me explore and know new things about my personality, I have always been the quiet student in class and ever since we switched to online learning, I could say that this is the only course where I got to participate with the students and my professor confidently. I enjoyed the group activities and the breakout rooms specifically. The fact that we used to split almost every class made me get to speak and interact with different students, which made me feel more comfortable and I was able to participate with them, and most importantly the conversations we had together made me feel that I was getting closer to them, and this made me feel that it was as if we were taking the class on campus. I also enjoyed writing blogposts. I loved how my blog posts were personal and were mostly based on my personal experiences, and this made me feel that I was listened to. This takes me to the self-development assignment specifically; this assignment was my favorite because I got to reflect on my online learning journey. This year was a tough one, it affected me psychologically and the fact that I got to pause and reflect on this experience made me learn new things about my personality and I was able to work on them and fix them and this has helped me a lot academically throughout this semester. (link to my blogposts:https://wordpress.com/posts/reemusamasblog.wordpress.com ) In addition, I have learnt a lot of information about digital literacies. Choose your digital literacy pathway assignment was one of my favorite assignments because it was rich with new information that I have never learnt about. The difference between digital skills and digital literacy is something everyone should know about because being skillful with a certain online platform doesn’t mean that I know how to use it, we need to understand the content we share fits in the context and suits the platforms’ users or not. I learnt tons of new information just by doing this assignment (link to my blog about choose your digital literacy pathway: https://wordpress.com/post/reemusamasblog.wordpress.com/116 ) and I would definitely share this information with my family and friends.

One of my favorite experiences in this course was Soliya. On of my dreams is to travel all around the world, learn about new cultures and traditions of different countries. Participating in Soliya made me feel that I have traveled to a couple of different countries because I have engaged with around 5 or more students who come from different countries; I learnt a lot about their different cultures and traditions and I even got to make friends, and all of that was behind a screen. I am very glad and proud of myself that I have participated in this experience because I never knew that I would be able to do all of that specially that everything is online. I would definitely tell my friends about this experience and I would share with them the link to participating in the Soliya connect program so that they get to gain the same experience and knowledge. If I were to show someone my learning in this course, they would be soliya, my blogpost because it has all my reflections about the different assignments, showing the things that I learnt, and finally my game. Designing this game was a different experience because I never tried to design a game before. (Links to the game: https://wordpress.com/post/reemusamasblog.wordpress.com/126 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSethOQTpWSTsF89tDKHWI-SkKWSStKzVOvh3vQUglSbSoF5AA/viewform )

Moreover, there aren’t many things that I would like to change about this course, but I believe that the game needed more feedback sessions. I personally needed more people to play the game and give me their opinions about it, I think that we could have created a google document where all students port their game’s 4th draft and we would be given 2 or 3 days to play all the games and give each other feedback and comments. Also, watching more ted talks or videos in class would have made us engage more and have more discussions together during the class. And finally, I would have loved to watch the coded bias movie together in class and have a discussion about it, it would make us gain different information from each other and share together our different perspectives.

Finally, I believe that this course would be beneficial for everyone, but it would be more beneficial for introverts or people who barely engage with others because the level of engagement in this class is very high. Also, this course gave us different opportunities and was full of different choices, we were given the choice to choose between the wheel of life and the gratitude journal, I chose the gratitude journal because I wanted to write blogposts and work on my writing skills because I barely get to write due to my major (architectural engineering) and this was very beneficial to me. However, there were some assignments where we had different opportunities or choices but I thought that they were almost the same with minimal differences, such as choosing between a movie or some ted talks, therefore they were not very valuable in my point of view. In a nutshell, this course was one of the best courses that I have taken through out the past 4 years, and I am very grateful for this opportunity.

Self Development Journey : Part 3

I am very glad that this semester is coming to an end, yet I am sad that I will miss one of the best courses that I have ever taken throughout my 5-year journey in university, which is the Digital Literacies course. This course was a different one, it was very light, yet extremely beneficial and full of new information and content. This is my 4th year in architectural engineering and it was a tough one. I had a lot of submissions through the past 3 weeks and it was very stressful. As I have mentioned before, our studio culture is the only thing that makes studying architecture more fun and more beneficial as well. I struggled through out this semester while working on my design course project, I had a major issue with communicating my ideas online to my professors and that made me progress slowly and showing minimal progress. As next semester I will be working on my graduation project, I really wish that we go back to campus because I need to be able to communicate with my professors and most importantly, I need to work on campus with the facilities that our department offers us. Last week, I was working on my final submission and I had to have more than 4 programs opened at the same time including revit (a modeling program), photoshop (for presentation), autocad (for producing architectural technical drawings such as plans and sections) and finally Lumion which is a rendering program. Having all these programs opened on my laptop made my laptop slow down and it crashed a couple of times, although my laptop is a gaming laptop and it is supposed to handle heavy work, however, my laptop crashed and I lost almost 60% of my files and I had to redo the work again. I believe that if I was working on campus, on the computers that the university offers, this would have never happened, and even if it happens, there are technicians who always help us with such issues. In a nutshell, working at home alone with minimal support makes it very stressful on me, and I hope after the students and the staff members of AUC take the vaccine, we can go back to operate regularly on campus. However, if the university decides to continue online for the next semester, I would want the architecture department to work more on finding ways to make students engage in their studio classes, either by creating breakout rooms for example where a couple of students can work together online to share ideas together etc. or to only allow students who have design courses to work on campus taking the safety precautions. This semester was extremely beneficial. I worked on myself regarding time management, handling my anxiety and most importantly I worked a lot on my physical and mental health as I went back to exercising, and this has helped me a lot. I am very grateful for these past 3 months because every experience keeps a special mark in my life.

Digital Narrative Game Final Reflection

Working on this game was very interesting. This is my first time ever to design a digital narrative game, and I believe that it was a great experience. Since the first day. I knew what I wanted this game to be about, and as you know, the game is about making big life decisions. I am not the best at making good decisions or choices, I am the type of person who barely thinks of the consequences and I am very reckless in taking decisions. Five years ago, I was put in a situation where I had to choose between traveling to Canada, Egypt or stay in Abu Dhabi where I was born and raised, and this was one of the toughest decisions that I had to ever make in my life. After researching about this topic, I now know what are the steps I should consider while making a big decision, and I want everyone to think carefully before making any decision, because the consequences may be tough.

When I first started designing this game, I didn’t really include the steps that I learnt about and researched about, also, the scenarios were not linked together and this was a major issue because it would confuse the player. I had to work more on the scenarios and design them carefully. Also, a major part of my game was the consequences, I had to explain carefully to the player what is the consequence of their specific choice, and how would it affect them later. I believe that if I had more time, I would have definitely worked more on my research, also I would have worked more on the scenarios and their options and consequences. In addition, I would have added visual, that were designed by me, to then scenarios to make it more interactive and interesting.

This game was a great opportunity for me, I learnt a lot from the beginning of the process till the end. Starting from the research as I learnt a lot about how to make a right decision and I knew that I had to change things in my personality to be able to think better and calmly while making a decision. Finally, and most importantly, I learnt the basics of designing a game and I am very grateful for this opportunity and I would definitely design more and more games in my free time.  

Choose your Digital Literacy Pathway Reflection

My Digital Profile:

Difference between digital skills and digital literacies:

Before taking this course, I never knew what does digital literacies meant. After reading the article about what is the difference between digital skills and digital literacies, I figured that being skillful doesn’t mean that I know how to use this particular online platform. Being skillful is important, one has to know how to use a certain online platform, however, we need to know in what context should we use it and that we need to ask questions before using any online platform, why am I posting this here, and why not on another platform for example, and whether this content is suitable for the users or no, and many more questions. For example, I never use online platforms for any type of discussions, however, when my friends post about a topic that might be controversial on Facebook, their friends an families always react and comment on the post and some people may end up having opposing opinions and start discussing the issue personally, however, if this was done on twitter for example, a more public platform this wouldn’t have happened because the tweet would be public and will be revolving around many more different people who are not friends or family, so it would be less personal, also, you would learn more about the topic because you will get a lot of different responses with much more different opinions. This is where digital literacies play an important role, one should know whom they are addressing writing and why.

Areas of weaknesses: I need to learn more about “tools and technologies” according to my digital profile, I need to learn about managing my settings because it is important to understand the settings of the platform im using, for example setting my privacy setting on facebook is very important hence I should be “comfortable” with it. Also, “identity and wellbeing” I need to learn more about my online identity and that is why I choose online identity to the taught path.

Strengths: I am comfortable with fining and using new digital platforms and applications and I am capable of learning them and teaching them to others.

Taught Path

-Online Identity:

I learnt that the content we share give a lot of information about us. Protecting yourself digitally protects our online data also it is very important to care about our reputation online because social media can put us in risk, such as subjecting us to bullying, harassment, bullying, etc. Finally, there are many ways that can help us to protect our data and digital identity, most important aspect of them in my opinion is be respectful because the content I share can say a lot about me. I have been subjected to situations where the use of social media has affected people I know negatively as they were subjected to harassment and it has affected their mental health. After learning about this session, I found that it is important to frequently change my passwords and to manage my privacy settings often.

-Digital skill research:

Referencing my work is very important. It prevents me from many different things such as plagiarism, it also differentiates my work from other people’s work and allows me to give credit to the authors of the articles I’m using. I always found references and citation a boring duty to do, but I acknowledged how important it is to do them.

Overall reflection:

The overall process added something very important to my learning skills. First of all, learning about digital literacies made me more aware of the online platforms I am using and made me want to be specific with the content I am using, and to know when and where to post it and with whom am I sharing it with. In addition, my digital profile made me know where are my points of weaknesses Ans strengths, it made me want to learn more about my weaknesses and develop them more. Hence, the path I chose was the taught path and I chose 2 topics one of which was learning about my digital identity. This topic opened to me a lot of topics that I have never thought of. For example, I never knew that googling myself can make me know whether my social media accounts are highly secured or not and whether I am put at risk or not. I also chose to learn about digital skill research, I don’t think that it is related to my digital profile, however, as I am approaching my graduation project, I found that I need to learn more about researching and citation and referencing other people work to prevent falling into the plagiarism trap, also to learn how can I find scholar sources for my research.

Reflection on Soliya Connect Express Program

Joining Soliya was an amazing experience. I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the program as I was scared, I thought I would feel awkward or I won’t get along with the people in my group, also I was scared that I won’t be able to have a dialogue with new people from different countries. Surprisingly, everything I thought of was wrong and I was very upset that this experience will come to an end.  

When I attended the first class, I introduced myself to the group and they were all very friendly and humble, even Anna the coordinator was very sweet and she was always keen to keep a conversation going between us, either by having us all to talk in the main room or splitting us into breakout rooms to help us engage more, and every class she would split us into different groups and each time I would meet a new person and learn new thing about them and their culture. The dialogue in soliya was completely different, it is different from my online zoom classes at university with my professors and colleagues. The fact that I met new people from all over the globe made me curious and keen to learn more about the different cultures, however, the regular dialogues we have for university are completely different as the professor would be always talking and us students would barely engage. I believe that the way our professors handle the class is different. The professor would prepare slides and read them on zoom then by the end of the class they would ask us if we have any questions, and people would barely engage because we did not have a dialogue or a discussion first about the topic to simulate questions to be asked. This is the main difference, or coordinator would ask us to prepare questions about a certain topic then we would discuss them next week in class, and here the dialogue of the previously prepared questions would simulate more questions hence the dialogue will keep going.

I learnt that I am the type of communicator who does not start a dialogue, I would listen first then discuss. I believe that this is something related to my personality. However, engaging in this connect program gave my self-esteem a boost as I am not a person who easily engages with people I have never met before, however, I did not find any troubles in that.

On the other hand, ever since we have switched to learning online, I never liked to open my camera because I was more comfortable having it closed. However, in soliya we were asked to keep our cameras open and I believe that having our cameras open was something that made us all engage and It made the communication easier as we were able to see each others’ facial expressions, and that is very important in a dialogue or in communication in general. Also, the fact that we were a small group made the communication easier between us as I find it difficult to have a dialogue with a large group, and I would personally prefer not to engage for many reasons such as I would feel intimidated by the large group. Participating in soliya was a new experience to me, I loved all the session, I never got bored in any, and most importantly I was able to connect with a couple of people who I can call my friends now. I am grateful for this experience because I learnt a lot of new things and most importantly, I learnt that I am capable of connecting with people of different cultures, norms and beliefs.

Coded Bias Reflection

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/04/08/523153.htm (copyright)

Reading about coded bias made me realise that discrimination is still surrounding us, not just in the society we live in but also in taking part in technology. After watching a ted talk called “How I’m fighting bias in algorithms” by Joy Boulamwini, I realized that algorithms are a tool for harming people by being bias, making people privileged and making others feel discriminated. Most facial recognition programs are mostly designed for white skinned people and causes harmful bias against people of darker skin tones. However, based on personal experience, during the covid-19 pandemic I have had some exams that were proctored online and were using a facial recognition algorithm. I am very light skinned and I was sitting in a room where the lighting was white and it was early in the morning where there was a lot of natural light in the room as well, the program did not recognise my face and I tried to fix my position i thought that something was wrong with my camera, and after wasting a lot of time from my exam time, I figured that the program was not able to recognise my face due to the fact that I am very white and the lighting was making me look more pale and white to the camera. Boulamwini mentioned in the ted talk that she was working on a project that had to deal with one of the facial recognition programs, and the program would not recognise her face because she is dark skinned and that she had to borrow her friend’s face in order to get her project done. This situation is different from mine because this is pure discrimination and not just a “lighting issue”. Such a situation would make the person feel less privileged and discriminated. As mentioned in the article, “5 ideas to make Silicon Valley less racist” by Meredith Broussard that technologies need to learn more about society, and I can’t agree more to that because these new technologies that are being designed recently need to be responding positively to what is happening now all around the world, as we are trying to fight racism and discrimination. People are raising awareness about this issue and trying to end discrimination, yet no one is acting upon that, and that is proven to me by what is happening with these recent facial recognition programs. This topic made me aware of what dark skinned people face in such situations as I have been put in a similar situation but I didn’t understand why this happened to me although this is very rare to happen as it was an issue with the lighting, but now I understand how others feel as it is related to their identity, their own skin colour.  

Link to the tedtalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG_X_7g63rY

Link to the article: https://onezero.medium.com/five-ideas-to-make-silicon-valley-less-racist-7a1069ad05f8

Self Development Journey : Part 2 and Reflection on: Trauma Informed Pedagogy by Professor Mays Imad

I liked many things about this session, but I would like to start with how do we get rid of a trauma? I believe that this pandemic is a trauma to many of us. I would like to relate this to what I have been going through in my major (Architectural Engineering) and with the learning techniques that are taking place now. So, she mentioned in the studio visit that “We don’t just “get over it” with grit and resilience and go on as business as usual; we need intervention to re-establish balance between feeling and thinking”. This quote made me think that all the learning techniques that are taking place now are not really helping with getting over the trauma. Integration is a key for making the brain develop, however, now with the minimal integration between the students and the professors, the brain will not be functioning at its best efficiency and will stay stuck at the same point showing almost no development. That is why my performance after the Covid-19 pandemic has been very low and I am not performing academically as well as I was performing before the pandemic, and that is because I lack the integration with my colleagues and professors. That takes me to the next point that was mentioned which is learning in context. Whenever I call my friends to catch up, I usually complain about how I am not performing well and the famous sentence that I keep on repeating on and on again is “I forgot how to design” or “What happened to me, have I not learnt anything in these past few years?!” and I figured that it is because I am not learning in context. The studio culture that we were constantly working in before the pandemic was something that made my brain to be continuously working and producing more and more ideas and thoughts and that was because the presence of my colleagues and professors made us all integrate together and create a studio culture “context” that was beneficial for all of us, and unfortunately, it is no longer available now. I believe that we need to find new ways of integration with the new normal that we are facing now, which is learning online, in addition, as mentioned by professor Mays Imad, teachers should reflect ad know why they do what they do and this is how they will find new ways to make us interact and integrate together and get past the trauma. On the other hand, as we are approaching the end of the semester, everything is now rushed and I am trying to wrap up my projects, however, I have learnt to manage my time well and that has been helping me with the stress. I hope that if next semester is still going to be online, my professors should work with the students and try to find a way to replace the studio culture and help us engage back together as we did before.