Building on Ethan Mollick’s concept of “co-intelligence” (2024) when working with GenAI, throughout this site, we highlight how AI can collaborate with educators and students to strengthen historical literacy and scaffold disciplinary thinking while maintaining critical engagement with the technology itself.

Rather than seeing AI as a threat to historical thinking, our resources reframe AI as a co-intelligent, collaborative, conversational (CCC) tool that supports students’ ability to analyze, argue, and engage with history in deeper ways. This session moves beyond AI as a simple automation tool and reimagines it as an interactive tutor, scaffolding historical inquiry and democratic thinking. Unlike static digital tools (e.g., PowerPoint replacing chalkboards), GenAI enables adaptive, personalized mentorship that supports students’ ability to analyze, argue, and critique historical sources. In this way, GenAI acts as a partner, moving the way we think about what teaching is and what it can be. GenAI has the ability to see, it can hear… it can even talk back to you.

Many teachers are either 1) fearful of this tool as a new way for students to cheat or engage in plagiarism or 2) using the tool in basic ways like creating rubrics. Alternatively, viewing GenAI as a co-intelligence tool that can engage in dialogue with the user opens up a new way of thinking about developing students as self-regulated learners. GenAI has the potential to provide understanding through one-on-one interactions with all students that teachers can’t always offer due to time or other limitations.

Though a natural inclination may be to restrict student use, throughout this site, we provide videos that model ways that GenAI can partner with students as they engage in the historical analysis of primary sources, consider concepts such as causation and significance, and develop robust and thoughtful inquiry questions. To achieve this goal, we invite teachers to explore current and emerging GenAI tools with a primary focus on ChatGPT.

Creating Self-Regulated Learners

GenAI and Inquiry Support – Instead of merely generating text, ChatGPT engages students in explicit strategy routines to formulate better historical questions and arguments- it can serve as a mentor to explain, demonstrate, and then provide feedback for students’ analysis.

Scaffolding Historical Thinking

Gen AI to Augment Primary Source Analysis – ChatGPT demonstrates how AI can scaffold inquiry-based learning with explicit scaffolds and engage students in conversations about inquiries, sources, and making claims.

Playing with Chronology and Causation

GenAI as a Historical Mentor – Using ChatGPT to guide students through the complexities of historical causation, chronology, and counter-narratives.