Organisation: Beate Ceranski (Stuttgart) & Stefan Esselborn (München)
During the last years, the easy access and widespread use of ever more sophisticated Large Language Models (LLMs) has changed teaching and academic assessment in the humanities. This round-table brings together perspectives from the history of science, technology, and medicine on the specific issues in our fields. It is meant to both profit from, and at the same time contribute to, the more general discussions at university departments. While sharing many practical concerns regarding essay writing, prompt editing, grading papers etc. with other historical fields, the history of science, technology and medicine is especially interested in the underlying epistemic transformations, since they are central to its own subject matter. By sharing perspectives and experiences from both technical/ practical and epistemic/theoretical aspects the Roundtable will take up the discussion on how to deal with LLMs in university teaching and how to bring our field’s particular expertise to bear within the larger university landscape
Program
Part I: Introduction (Beate Ceranski)
// The introductory part will give an overview concerning the state of
affairs at German universities and will also take into consideration the participants‘ experiences and questions
Part II: Teaching the History of Science and Technology in the Age of AI: Practical Problems and General
Questions (Stefan Esselborn)
// The spread of LLMs has caused a number of practical problems for all those
teaching and writing history of science and technology, starting with how to react to a flood of AI-generated
student papers. At the same time, generative AI also poses more fundamental epistemic questions for historians
and academics in the humanities in particular. This short input will outline some of the challenges and
opportunities arising out of the advent of GenAI, opening up the field for the subsequent discussion with a
number of questions.
Part III: Discussion
// The main part of the panel will be dedicated to an interactive discussion of problems,
challenges and opportunities connected to the spread of GenAI in the context of teaching history of science and
technology. We are very interested in the participants’ experiences and thoughts, thereby sharing insights from
a variety of backgrounds. In order to keep the discussion focused, we propose a two-part structure, in which we
will first address more practical and technical issues, followed by larger epistemic and theoretical questions.
Part IV: Summing up and taking home
// The results of the workshop will be summed up, documented and made
available to the participants.