Write a 500-word reflection on your economic indicator research and your experience using NotebookLM as an AI research tool. This reflection accompanies your final infographic and should be submitted together as a single email to ilogvinenko@oxy.edu.
Your reflection should address two dimensions: what you learned about your indicator and how the tool shaped that learning. These are not separate sections—the best reflections will weave them together.
Guiding Questions
You do not need to answer every question below. Use them as starting points.
On Your Indicator
- What does your indicator actually measure, and what does it leave out? Who decided what counts?
- What surprised you most about the data—a trend, a country outlier, a historical turning point?
- How does your indicator look different when viewed through a liberal lens versus a neomercantilist or Marxist one? Which perspective does the indicator’s design implicitly favor?
- In what ways does your indicator exercise productive power—creating categories, defining what a “good” or “failing” state looks like?
On the AI Research Process
- Where was NotebookLM faster or more effective than your manual research? Where did it fall short?
- What did the Audio Overview or Infographic get confidently wrong—and would you have caught it without doing your own research first?
- Did NotebookLM flatten any genuine theoretical disagreements into a false consensus?
- How did you revise the AI-generated infographic for your final version? What editorial choices did you make that the AI couldn’t?
What I’m Looking For
This is not a product review of NotebookLM.
I am looking for evidence that you engaged critically with both the substance of your indicator and the process of using AI to research it. Strong reflections will connect the two: for instance, explaining how the AI’s framing of your indicator revealed (or obscured) the productive power embedded in that measurement.
Write in your own voice. Be specific—name the country, cite the data point, describe the moment the Audio Overview said something you knew was incomplete. Vague claims like “the AI was helpful but had some limitations” tell me nothing.
Format & Submission
Submit together: Your reflection and your revised infographic should be attached to the same email. The infographic you present Thursday is a draft—the version you submit Wednesday should be better.
If you used AI tools to draft or revise this reflection, include a brief disclosure note at the end per our course AI policy (Responsibility Clause + Disclosure Appendix).