Using Artificial Intelligence in an Undergraduate History Course: A Pilot Study of Personalized Chatbot Design Promoting Student Engagement and Self-Directed Learning

This pilot study investigates the integration of a course-specific artificial intelligence chatbot, “Jaybot,” into a first-year undergraduate history class to explore how personalized digital tutoring can promote engagement and self-directed learning. Built on the PROSE prompt-engineering framework, the chatbot was aligned with course objectives, rubrics, and assignments to deliver contextual feedback and interactive quiz practice through a Streamlit-based interface linked to the university’s learning-management system. Twenty consenting students participated in this mixed-methods design, completing AI-supported writing and quiz activities followed by a post-course survey and qualitative reflections. Results showed high satisfaction, perceived relevance, and motivation, with students emphasizing the chatbot’s immediacy, accessibility, and usefulness for writing support and concept review. Reported challenges centered on slow responses, occasional inaccuracies, and a plain interface. Overall, the study suggests that when grounded in pedagogical alignment, AI chatbots can enrich undergraduate learning and extend instructor presence, while future work should refine design, reliability, and depth of feedback across broader classroom contexts.