History Education in the Age of AI: Challenges and Opportunities

AHA Session 307
Monday, January 6, 2025: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM
Empire Ballroom East (Sheraton New York, Second Floor)
Chair:
Daniel Kelly, Southfield Public Library

Session Abstract

This roundtable discussion on the impact of A.I. on history education brings together educators and scholars from diverse backgrounds, including an early college, a community college, a research university, and a public library. The discussion will center on some of the ramifications that the sudden and startling emergence of A.I. has had on the classroom, but will also explore ways to use the technology in history education as well as propose methods for preserving historical thinking in the face of rapid technological changes. Dr. Sharony Green (University of Alabama) addresses how she has minimized the negative effects of A.I. in education by assigning creative projects for her undergraduate students. Green, who specializes in U.S. history with a focus on the antebellum period, and her students have benefited greatly from visits to historical sites and museums on and off campus. Dr. Betsy Wood (Bard Early College) discusses A.I.’s ability to both revolutionize and jeopardize historical inquiry, as well as how the emergence of A.I. has impacted the essential questions asked in her seminar sequence: “What does it mean to be human?” and “How do we know what we know?”. Tony Acevedo, an Associate Professor at Hudson County Community College, examines the way that online history education in particular has been challenged by the rise A.I.. Discussion forums and written assignments have been central components of online history courses, but A.I. software can potentially uproot the traditional methods of assessment in online learning. Acevedo proposes strategies for creating assignment prompts that will make student use of A.I. software untenable and will examine ways that faculty can use A.I. to forecast the problems that might arise with different types of assignments. Dr. Christopher Cody, also at Hudson County Community College, explores ways that A.I can be embedded into history curriculum to enable students to become active learners, including comparing A.I.-generated interviews in the style of historical personalities (e.g., Teddy Roosevelt) with what is actually known about those historical figures. Finally, the presentation will contextualize the issue of A.I. in history education by comparing it to several pedagogical “panics” that have arisen throughout the previous two decades, including the rise of MOOCs, the content vs skills debate, and anxieties about the future of the introductory survey course. The roundtable discussion will be chaired by Dr. Daniel Kelly, a librarian in the Detroit area who in addition to the M.L.I.S degree holds a Ph.D. in World History. Because of the broad range of experience of the panelists, the discussion has relevance for university faculty, community college faculty, high school faculty, and public historians.
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