How My APUSH Students Are Using AI to Learn “The Twelve Dates”

Something new and wondering what you think

To do well on the annual APUSH exam, students need to know only twelve dates, with what they need to know about each of these dates described in an article I published two years ago: Dates to Remember in APUSH.

Historically, my approach to teaching these dates was to emphasize their importance throughout the year, ensuring that students are regularly reminded of their significance. Then, towards the end of the year, I provided the students with time in class to review, and on rare occasions, followed this with a quiz. While this method was generally effective, it not only failed to engage all students equally but also lacked a personalized feedback mechanism.

Now, I’m encouraging my students to turn to an AI tool of their choosing to transform how they learn these dates, with this approach designed to provide a more interactive and individualized learning experience.

In other words, to provide my students from here out with an opportunity to assess the extent to which they have learned what’s in my 2021 article, I will call on them, after they have read the article, to copy and paste into an AI platform of their choosing everything that appears below up to Sidenote #1.
____

Hey AI tool of my choosing, for this year’s APUSH exam, I only need to know the significance of twelve dates. Could you assist me in mastering these dates through a series of multiple-choice questions, with these questions to be asked one at a time? Please alternate between question types.

• For the first question, provide one of the twelve years, and include four possible answers with only one correct option.
• For the second question, describe an event that occurred in the 1800s, and provide each of the possible answer choices: 1800, 1844, 1848, 1865, 1877, 1890, or 1898.

Your questions should draw from what appears below:

1491

• The year before the arrival of Columbus
• The final year in which native or indigenous cultures and civilizations in the United States, and for that matter, the western hemisphere, were allowed to progress in an undisturbed way, free of widespread European contact, conquest, and genocide.
• The year before the start of the Columbian Exchange

1607

• The settlement of Jamestown, in the Colony of Virginia
• The founding of the first permanent English-speaking colony
• Approximately 20 years after the founding of Roanoke

1754

• The start of the French and Indian War
• The Proclamation Act and the end of salutary neglect (a few years later)
• Eleven years before the Stamp Act and the start of the American Revolution
• Sixteen years before the Boston Massacre

1800

• The election of Thomas Jefferson. Before Jefferson, it was Washington and Adams.
• The birth of modern democracy (approximately). What we had before was an “emerging” democracy, not a modern democracy. A modern democracy is one that, at a minimum, provides the common man with the right to vote, the courts with the power of judicial review, and the president with a cabinet. It also consists of political parties that pass power peacefully.
• The end of slavery in the North (approximately).
• Eight years before the banning of the international slave trade.
• The start of the 1st Industrial Revolution (approximately) with Irish immigrants mostly working in the factories located in the northeast and German immigrants mostly working on the farms west of the Appalachians
• The start of the Market Revolution (approximately) and the ability to buy and sell in distant markets, not just local markets.
• The birth of a new national culture (approximately). In other words, the birth of the belief that Americans, especially after the War of 1812, were finally free of the British, that it was good to be an American, that America, not just Europe, had things to feel good about. An Era of Good Feeling.
• The birth of the first party system (approximately). The first two-party system consisted of the Federalist Party, which supported the ratification of the Constitution, and the Democratic-Republican Party or the Anti-Administration party (Anti-Federalists), which opposed the powerful central government that the Constitution established when it took effect in 1789.
• The birth of the judicial review (approximately). This refers to the court’s power to declare laws unconstitutional, which did not exist before the 1800s.
• Approximate start of the Second Great Awakening
• The doubling of the size of the United States (approximately); with the Lousiana Purchase

1844

• The election of James K. Polk
• The coining of the phrase Manifest Destiny (approximately)
• The year before the annexation of Texas

1848

• The end of Mexican American War
• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican Cession (the ceding to the U.S. of the presently known states of Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, and parts of three other states.
• The Seneca Falls Convention, the Declaration of Sentiments, and the birth of the women’s suffrage movement
• Gold discovered in California
• A few years before the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1865

• The end of the Civil War
• The start of Reconstruction
• The ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments, 13, 14, and 15 (approximately)
• The start of the Second Industrial Revolution
• A few years before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad and a few years after construction on the Transcontinental Railroad began.

1877

• The end of Reconstruction
• A few years after the start of the Gilded Age

1890

• The end of the Gilded Age
• The start of the Progressive Era (approximately)
• The publication of Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives
• The publication of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History
• The Wounded Knee Massacre
• Passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
• Closing of the frontier (there can hardly be said to be a frontier line)

1898

• The Spanish-American War
• The Treaty of Paris (which allowed the US temporary control of Cuba and “ceded ownership” of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine islands to the US.)
• Annexation of Hawaii
• Two years after the USSC’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson

1945

• The end of World War II
• The start of the Cold War (approximately)
• Two years before the Truman Doctrine

1980

• The election of Ronald Reagan
• The end of the counter-culture movement
• The birth of a resurgent conservative movement

AI tool of my choosing, just remember

• One MCQ at a time.
• After a question is presented, invite me to answer; and then assess.
• Questions might be better phrased in the form of asking me to match what is “most closely associated with a date that follows,” rather than matched to a specific year.
• Do not forget to alternate between question types.
• The second question will have seven answer choices: 1800, 1844, 1848, 1865, 1877, 1890, or 1898.

Sidenote #1:

After you’ve had the GPT ask you three questions, try kicking ChatGPT up a notch by prompting it with the below:

“Now try creating a question that relates to this and tests one of the following thinking/reasoning skills: Development and Process, Claim and Evidence, Making Connections, and Argumentation.

Sidenote #2:

If you’re planning to give my prompts a go, it’s worth noting that my students are reporting some issues with accuracy when using ChatGPT 3.5 on older computers. That’s not the case with ChatGPT-4, which seems to provide infinitely more reliable and accurate responses