The Wizard of OT

Making History Come to Life: Using Character.AI to Teach the Occupational Therapy History

10-23-24

Heather Kuhaneck

The history of occupational therapy (OT) is rich with pioneering figures and transformative moments that have shaped the profession. However, conveying this history in an engaging and interactive manner can be challenging. Imagine bringing historical figures into your classroom to share their experiences, ideas, and stories firsthand with students. For example, teaching about the founders of the profession—pioneers like Eleanor Clarke Slagle, William Rush Dunton Jr., and Susan Tracy—often relies on textbooks and lectures. However, integrating Character.AI into your curriculum can alter how history is taught, making it engaging and interactive. This post will explore what Character.AI is, how to use it, and why it may be a valuable tool for occupational therapy educators.

What is Character.AI?

Character.AI is a platform that allows users to create and interact with virtual figures (historical or fictional). The platform generates realistic conversations, making interactions with the digital characters feel authentic. The technology can simulate the thought processes, language styles, and knowledge of specific individuals, allowing students to engage in dialogues as if they were speaking directly to historical figures.

In the context of occupational therapy education, Character.AI can bring the profession’s founders to life, letting students “talk” to Eleanor Clarke Slagle. This form of learning moves beyond static biographies, immersing students in the experiences and philosophies of key figures in the field.

How to Use Character.AI in Teaching the History of Occupational Therapy

• Identify Historical Figures and Create the AI Character(s)
  Start by selecting key figures who contributed significantly to the profession’s early development and whose stories illustrate the foundational principles and evolution of occupational therapy. Character.AI allows you to either create custom characters or choose from pre-existing characters built by other users. To make the experience more accurate, you can program these characters with specific information about the individual, including their contributions to occupational therapy, notable quotes, or even their writing style. This setup will help make the character more realistic and authentic.
• Integrate Character.AI into Course Activities
  Use the platform to facilitate role-playing exercises, Q&A sessions, or debates. For example, students could engage in conversation with William Rush Dunton about his work with patients during the early 1900s or with Mary Reilly about the development of occupational behavior. These activities can be designed to encourage students to explore the characters’ perspectives, philosophies, and the context of their times. Following their conversations with historical figures, students can reflect on what they learned by writing a summary or discussing the activity in class. Prompts could include questions such as, “How did the approach to mental health differ in the early 1900s compared to today?”
• Assess Learning Outcomes Through Follow-Up Activities
  To ensure your specific learning objectives are met, be sure to follow up with further assessment and include methods for students to draw comparisons between historical and current practices, and consider the influence of historical events outside of the profession, on the profession. 

How to create a character?

Creating a character on Character.ai involves a few steps:

• Select Create a New Character: Start by selecting “Create a Character” from the Character.ai interface. You’ll be prompted to fill in the basic details, such as the character’s name and greeting message (the initial message the character sends to users).
• Character Description: Write a detailed description of the character, which serves as the character’s background and personality guide. This description should include traits, interests, knowledge areas, speaking style, and any special characteristics that define the character. (So the more information available about a person the better the character will be).
• Character Definitions (Optional): You can add more specific “definition” entries to shape the character’s behavior and responses in various situations. These can include instructions on how the character should behave when discussing certain topics, its tone, or how it reacts to different user inputs. (So again, the more information available about a person the better the character will be).
• Testing and Refining: Interact with your character to see how it responds to different prompts and adjust the settings or definitions accordingly. The more you chat with the character and refine its responses, the more tailored its behavior will become. Initially it may get things wrong. Although this too can be used with students- as you may ask them to check the answers they got and help train the character for the following cohort.
• Advanced Settings: For further customization, you can tweak advanced settings like the character’s memory settings (how much context it retains) and response length preferences.
• More information from Character.ai for “how to” https://book.character.ai/character-book/how-to-quick-creation 
• Cost: There is a free version although it does have some limitations. https://blog.character.ai/introducing-c-ai/ 

Why Use Character.AI in Occupational Therapy Education?

• Experiential Learning
  Character.AI aligns with experiential learning theories, which emphasize the importance of students’ experiences in the learning process. By simulating interactions with historical figures, students can gain deeper insights into the evolution of the profession, its foundational principles, and the impact of cultural and social contexts on its development. Using Character.AI transforms passive learning into an active, engaging experience. It can encourage students to think critically and interact with course content in a way that traditional lectures and textbooks may not achieve. When students “speak” with the founders of occupational therapy, they may be more likely to connect with the material and retain the information.
• Promotes Inquiry-Based Learning
  By asking questions and engaging in dialogues with historical figures, students practice inquiry-based learning. This type of learning is shown to be effective in developing critical thinking skills and promoting a deeper understanding of subject matter. It allows students to explore content in a way that encourages curiosity and deeper exploration.
• Evidence Supporting AI and Interactive Learning
  Research shows that interactive and simulation-based learning tools, including AI-based applications, can improve educational outcomes by increasing student engagement and motivation. For example, a study on AI’s role in education found that students who engaged in interactive learning with AI-driven tools performed better in critical thinking assessments and reported higher satisfaction levels with the learning experience. This aligns with findings in occupational therapy education, where experiential and inquiry-based learning approaches have been shown to be beneficial for student growth and knowledge retention. There is just beginning to be research and literature in this area specifically.
• Facilitates Understanding of Historical Context
  Discussing the lives and contributions of the founders helps students appreciate the history and evolution of occupational therapy. It offers a chance to understand the challenges faced by early practitioners and how their solutions shaped modern practices. Character.AI’s realistic character simulations make it easier for students to visualize these historical contexts and see their relevance in today’s practices.

Additional Practices: 

• You can enhance historical learning with Video Lip Sync. Video lip sync technology uses AI to sync the lip movements of digital avatars with pre-recorded audio, creating realistic and engaging video content. This can be used to recreate historical speeches, lectures, and interviews. For example, students could create a video reenactment of the founding meeting of the National Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy with digital avatars of the founders discussing their vision for the profession. 
• If you want to get very fancy you can add Virtual Reality (VR) Integration as well. You can combine AI tools with VR to create fully immersive historical experiences. For example, students could “step into” Hull House perhaps and interact with a digital Jane Addams. 

If you would like to play around with it- I have started to create Eleanor Clarke Slagle and I am training her and adding more information as I can find it.  https://character.ai/chat/qYmmIJ4P-KbmBW5ugKs76cbPJmuBvjVFtIgebZlSkLc 

She is not perfect and still gets things wrong at times. Ah well- the models need training!

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To see a well developed example of tusing AI in this way- see the Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony project (https://sfi.usc.edu/dit/interviewees) This project uses stories of Holocaust survivors, digitized and filmed—and then AI allows individuals to ask questions and get answers from the content- allowing learners to “hear” from the source.

References

Chan, H. Y., Liu, S. W., & Hou, H. T. (2024). Interacting with real-person non-player characters to learn history: Development and playing behavior pattern analysis of a remote scaffolding-based situated educational game. Interactive Learning Environments, 32(7), 3892-3912.

Danoff, M., & Chang, Y. K. (2022). Simulating the Past: The Case for AI in History Pedagogy. (https://media.journoportfolio.com/users/296141/uploads/67c3735e-b156-4729-93a1-a5c4b8b6bce0.pdf)

Perillo, F., Romano, M., & Vitiello, G. (2024, June). Enhancing Historical Understanding in School Students: Designing a VR Application with AI-Animated Characters. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 84-93). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.