Design and Formative Evaluation of an AI Application
to Search for Recent News Similar to the History Studied in Class
Ryohei Ikejiri, The University of Tokyo, ikejiri@i-timemachine.net
Yasunobu Sumikawa, Takushoku University, ysumikaw@cs.takushoku-u.ac.jp
Ryo Yoshikawa, Aichi Shukutoku University, yskw@asu.aasa.ac.jp
Abstract: Developing history education that considers learners' contexts and interests has beena long-standing challenge. To address this issue, this study designed an AI application based on
an existing algorithm that can present multiple contemporary news sites with similar causal
structures when learners input the causal relationships of interest into what they have learned inhistory. Formative evaluations with high school students confirmed the effectiveness of theapplication in providing contemporary news sites that learners find relevant according to theirinterests, as well as in increasing the significance of history learning in various ways. For
example, the effects of new discoveries regarding the relationship between history and recent
news increased interest in both were confirmed. The design of this AI application therefore haspractical significance for the advancement of education methods.

Introduction
There has been a longstanding interest in learning sciences to develop ways to enhance the meaningfulness oflearning by connecting classroom history content with learners' contexts. Research on history education has
increased since the 1990s to develop historical thinking; and in recent years, students have been able to learn
history with a focus on their interests and contexts (Barton & Levstick, 2004; Van-Boxtel & Van-Drie, 2018).
Consequently, three major models were developed to increase the significance of learning history formodern learners. The first is a teaching model in which the teacher presupposes an important contemporary theme
in modern society and historical causation related to that theme, and conducts "learning from history" activities,culminating in a discussion on the contemporary theme. For example, Mansilla (2000) used the Rwandan genocide
as an important theme in the present day, taught the history of the German genocide during World War II, andconducted a class that examined the Rwandan genocide in light of what was learned from that history. Otherstudies have developed systems that allow learners to enter the text of contemporary news of interest to them andsearch for related historical causations, allowing them to learn from history and deepen their consideration ofcontemporary news (Ikejiri et al., 2019). The second is an inquiry class model in which learners formulate
historical questions about the theme they wish to inquire about and analyze historical sources on their own.
Various historical inquiries have been reported by Barton and Levstick (2004), mainly in informal settings, andthis model has been systematically summarized by Van-Boxtel et al. (2021). The third is a teaching model thatallows students to extract the causal characteristics of a certain history taught in class, recall related contemporary
events, and reflect on the present day. For example, Harris (2006) developed a class in which students analyzed
the impact of the Norman Conquest in England at the time, while making them aware that similar changes occur
in contemporary global society.
However, each of these models faces its own challenges in teaching classes that reflect student interestsand contexts. The first model has the problem that themes that teachers consider important and themes that learners
consider important do not always coincide. The second model is still less discussed in terms of how students
formulate historical questions, and research is required to envision a long-term learning process in which students
formulate questions as they learn about history. The third model relies heavily on students' knowledge of relevant
contemporary events. In other words, scaffolding is required to diversify the contemporary events that can berecalled; however, this technique has not yet been developed.
This study focused on solving the problems of the third model. This is because while research on the firstand second models to approach history from the present day has progressed, research on the third model, whichapproaches the present day from history, has been scarce. History is composed of a series of cause-and-effectrelationships, and because of this characteristic, many curricula teach history in a general historical manner while
incorporating theme studies related to the present day in the middle or at the end of the curriculum. This is also
the case in Japan (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2018). Therefore, upgrading
the method of approaching the present day from history is significant because it will allow students to learn whilemoving back and forth between history and contemporary events at any stage of the history education curriculum.
In this study, we designed an AI-based application that can present multiple modern news sites withsimilar causal structures when the learner inputs texts of cause-and-effect of interest among the contents studied

in the history course. Additionally, we formatively evaluated the kind of learning and the significance learners
experience when using this application.

DesignExamination of history input information and modern output information
In recent years, history classes have tended to emphasize the inference of historical causality (Van-Boxtel & VanDrie, 2018). When relating history to the present day, the focus is not only on superficial elements (labor) but also
on historical causality (the industrial revolution caused labor problems), which is often used to examine the causesof contemporary social problems and future trends (Mansilla, 2000).
Therefore, as input data, we consider it appropriate to establish causal relationships, that is, cause-andeffect sentences learned in that day's history class. Additionally, we considered it necessary to have the ability toinput which aspect of historical causality (political, economic, cultural, or social) the learner is interested in, sothat the weighting could be based on the learner's interest.
We set the contemporary output information related to historical causality as modern web news. A varietyof approaches can be considered for contemporary historical information such as news that includes contemporarysocial issues (Ikejiri et al., 2019). Therefore, we collected daily web news provided by Japanese publicbroadcasters along with titles, dates, news categories (political, social, etc.), and URLs and grouped similar news.
This allowed the presentation of newsgroups that were similar to the history students entered and allowed themto view individual web news items from those newsgroups.

Algorithm to output modern web news sites related to historical causality
To develop the application, we used an algorithm developed by Matsumaru et al. (2022), which outputs
contemporary news related to historical input causal relations. Specifically, the algorithm converts a particularera-specific expressions into general expressions (e.g., "Italy" → "country") for a pre-prepared contemporary
news causal sentence and performs the same conversion when the learner inputs a past causal sentence (e.g.,"Roman Empire" → "country"). Natural language processing and machine learning methods such asmorphological analysis, stop word removal, and feature vector creation were then applied to the converted
sentences. To apply the method of measuring the similarity between historical and contemporary causal
relationships, a bipartite graph was constructed with feature vectors as nodes and edges, whose weights were thesimilarities between feature vectors, and a maximum weight matching solution was applied. We applied thismethod to the combination of past causal relations entered by students and all contemporary web news that wecontinued to collect so that we could search for groups of web news with similar contemporary causal relations
in ranking order.
Furthermore, two features were added to further increase each learner’s interest. First, the display ofnews in ranking order was limited to newsgroups whose news was issued within the last month so that learners
could feel that the news is recent. We also attempted to highlight and show newsgroups with categories thatmatched the aspects of interest (political, economic, cultural, and social) entered by the learners.

Design of the Historical Spiral application
The web application that implements the algorithm described above is the Historical Spiral shown in Figures 1and 2. This web application is intended to be accessed at the end of each history class with personal smartphones
and to input interesting historical causal relationships learned that day (left side of Figure 1). Then, to reflect theinterest of the individual learner, we let them choose which aspect they were interested in and searched for (rightside of Figure 1). Consequently, the system can present a group of recent web news items that are similar to thecausal history entered, as shown on the left side of Figure 2. Additionally, the stars in the output results in Figure
2 represent news that matches the aspects of interest. By clicking on a newsgroup, the URL of the individual newssite is displayed, and the text can be read on the actual news site (right side of Figure 2).

Formative EvaluationThe formative evaluation in this study was conducted to answer the following two questions: Can this application
provide a variety of news items that learners feel are similar to and aligned with their interests? Can thisapplication enhance the significance of learning history and, if so, how does it enhance it?
The formative evaluation was conducted after school in July 2023 with four first-year high school
students taking history at a mid-level Japanese high school. The four agreed to a consent form for the use of
research data in accordance with research ethics. The procedure was as follows: First, the four students were

Figure 1
Example of input screen for learned historical causal relations in the developed application

Figure 2
Output screen example of recent news similar to the learned historical causal relationshipgrouped together and asked to recall the history they had studied in a recent history class and select one causeand-effect relationship that they thought was important while viewing the textbook. Consequently, they selected
the causal relationship of the American Revolutionary War in the late 18th century. Next, they were asked torecall a contemporary event that they thought was related to the causal relationship of that history and describe it
individually, along with the reasons they thought they were similar (5 minutes). They were then asked toindividually use our application on the causal relationship of the American Revolutionary War. If they searched
for news that they thought was similar, they were free to read the news (15 minutes). The input process wasrecorded on video. After using the application, they were asked to describe contemporary events that they thought
were relevant to the causal relationship of the American Revolutionary War, along with the reasons why they
thought they were similar (5 minutes). After that, the four participants were then given a group interview for
approximately 20 minutes and asked the following main questions: "How many contemporary news events did
you find similar through the application?" ‘Have the applications changed your usual view of history?’

Two analyses were conducted using the collected data in line with the two objectives of formativeevaluation. First, based on the description data and interview data, we analyzed whether they were able to obtainvarious types of information on contemporary news that they found relevant through this application and whether
this application can provide information that corresponds to their individual differences in interest. Second, basedon interview data, we analyzed whether and how contemporary and historical interests improved through thisapplication.

Results and Discussion
Interview data indicated that using the app, an average of 3.00 news items per person (SD= 0.82) appeared to berelated to the cause and effect of the American Revolutionary War. Additionally, after analyzing their pre- andpost-free writing, all four wrote about a new contemporary event similar to the American Revolutionary War,which they had learned through the application. Furthermore, the new news that each wrote did not overlap. Thisis because the historical causal sentences entered in the application were slightly different for each learner, andthe different categories of interest they had selected during the course of the application ("politics" for one,"economics" for one, and "culture" for two), changed the contemporary news that was output or highlighted.
Furthermore, the interview data showed that all four participants remarked on a variety of effects that enhanced
the significance of their learning history. For example, they mentioned the effects of new discoveries about therelationship between history and recent news that increased interest in both (three students), the effects of wanting
to research the relationship between history and the present day in class in the future (two students), the effects ofimproved interest in history in general that they learned in class (one student), and the effects of being aware of
the similarities between history and the present day, making it easier to retain history when learning it (onestudent). These results suggest the effectiveness of this application in providing contemporary news that students
think is relevant to the history studied in our history classes while accommodating individual differences ininterest. It has also been suggested that this application could increase the significance of learning history invarious ways.
Although the sample size for this formative evaluation was extremely small, it is significant that wedesigned an AI application that can relate any historical causal relationship to the contemporary context in whichlearners live, and that the significance of learning history can be improved in various ways by allowing learners
to discover various relationships between history and the current context. However, it is a future task to have morehigh school students use this application in conjunction with long-term history classes and to verify theeffectiveness of how the significance of learning history changes over time and how this affects their attitude
toward taking regular history classes.

References
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 22K02884.