Are You Smarter Than AI? U.S. History Essay

In this assignment, students selected one of the course's central themes and wrote a thesis-driven essay analyzing how and why that theme evolved over a 40–50 year period in U.S. history. Before developing their own argument, students prompt one or more AI tools to generate a response to the same historical question, then briefly synthesize the AI's analysis in the introduction before presenting a more nuanced, evidence-based interpretation grounded in course content.

Author: Mark Brilliant, Associate Professor in History

Course Number & Title: History 7B: An Introduction to U.S. History 1865-present

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Details
Assignment Title
 

Are You Smarter Than AI? U.S. History Essay

(Final paper assignment)

Delivery FormatIn-person
Learning Objectives
  • Construct a persuasive thesis claim
  • Include thorough primary source evidence that aligns with and supports the primary thesis claim.
  • Develop a clear writing style to support claims effectively.
Brief Summary of Assignment

This paper is inspired by the former television game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” In this case, this assignment invites students to ask: “Are You Smarter Than an AI (or LLM, Large Language Model) When It Comes to United States History (based on what you’ve learned in History 7B)?” The answer is, “Yes, of course, you are,” and this paper is your opportunity to demonstrate how.

Throughout the semester, History 7B has paid particular attention to three, often interrelated, themes that weave throughout the years it covers. Those themes go by the mnemonic “The 3 P’s of History 7B”: (1) pluralism, (2) political economy, and (3) projection of power.

For this paper, students pick one of the “3 P’s” - or a subset of one them - and write an essay where they advance and defend a thesis about how and why the “P” - or a subset of the “P” - chosen has evolved (i.e., changed over time) over the course of U.S. history during at least a 40-50 year period of time that this course covers (roughly 1865 to the early 20th century).

To set up the paper, students spend some time asking one or more LLMs how it would tackle the assignment based on the 7B “P” you’ve chosen? For example, “How would you (Gemini or Chat GPT or pick another LLM or two) describe the change-over-time in U.S. political economy since the Civil War and why?” Then, in no more than 250-300 words in the paper’s introduction, students synthesize what they find and let that set the table for the better, more sophisticated thesis/argument you advance and defend based on the “P” - or subset of the “P” - chosen.

Content tags