How UCC Achieved 90% Student Engagement Using AI Historical Personas: A No-Code Success Story

History education faces a persistent challenge: how do you make events from centuries ago feel relevant and engaging to students scrolling through TikTok and Instagram? At University College Cork (UCC), a team of educators discovered an answer that sounds almost too good to be true. By creating AI-powered historical personas using a no-code platform, they achieved something remarkable: a 90% student engagement rate in their history modules.

This wasn’t a pilot program with hand-selected students or a one-time novelty that wore off after the initial excitement. It was a sustained, semester-long transformation that fundamentally changed how students interacted with historical content. The best part? The educators who built these AI experiences had zero coding experience and created their first functional historical persona in under ten minutes.

This case study explores how UCC turned historical figures into interactive AI conversational partners, what obstacles they overcame, and what lessons other educators can apply to their own institutions. Whether you’re teaching history, literature, science, or any subject that could benefit from interactive learning experiences, the insights from this project offer a blueprint for leveraging AI without technical barriers.

The Challenge: Bringing History to Life in Digital Classrooms

Dr. Eleanor McCarthy, a senior lecturer in Irish History at UCC, had watched student engagement decline over her fifteen-year teaching career. Traditional lectures, even when supplemented with videos and primary source documents, struggled to capture attention in an increasingly digital world. Students dutifully took notes, but the spark of genuine curiosity seemed absent.

The pandemic’s shift to online learning made these challenges even more apparent. Discussion forums sat empty. Virtual office hours went unattended. Students treated historical content as information to be memorized rather than perspectives to be understood. Dr. McCarthy realized that the problem wasn’t the students or the content itself, but the medium through which they were connecting.

She wanted students to experience history as conversation, not lecture. To understand historical figures as complex individuals with motivations, contradictions, and personal voices. But hiring actors for role-play sessions wasn’t scalable, and traditional chatbots required technical expertise her department didn’t possess. The university’s IT department had a six-month backlog for custom development projects, and the budget for educational technology experiments was virtually nonexistent.

Dr. McCarthy needed a solution that was immediate, affordable, and simple enough that she could build and modify it herself without waiting for technical support. She needed to maintain control over the historical accuracy and pedagogical approach while making the experience feel authentic and engaging to digital-native students.

The Solution: AI-Powered Historical Personas

The breakthrough came when Dr. McCarthy discovered no-code AI platforms that allowed anyone to create custom conversational AI applications without programming knowledge. The concept was straightforward: she could build AI personas that embodied historical figures, complete with their documented perspectives, speaking styles, and knowledge bases, then make these personas available to students as interactive conversation partners.

Unlike generic AI chatbots that might hallucinate historical facts, these custom applications would be built on carefully curated information that Dr. McCarthy herself provided. She could embed primary source documents, historical context, and specific conversational parameters to ensure accuracy. The AI would respond in character while staying grounded in historical reality.

The pedagogical advantages were immediately apparent. Students could ask questions that would never fit into a traditional lecture format. They could explore tangential topics, challenge historical figures’ decisions, and develop critical thinking skills by engaging with perspectives different from their own. The experience would be available 24/7, allowing students to learn at their own pace and revisit conversations as needed.

Most importantly, the no-code approach meant Dr. McCarthy could iterate quickly. If a persona’s responses weren’t quite right, she could adjust the training data and republish within minutes. If students showed particular interest in a specific aspect of a historical period, she could create additional personas to explore that dimension more deeply.

Why No-Code Was Essential

The no-code aspect wasn’t just convenient; it was fundamental to the project’s success. Traditional software development would have created several insurmountable barriers that would have killed the project before it started.

Speed to implementation: Dr. McCarthy needed the personas ready for the upcoming semester, which was just three weeks away. With a no-code platform, she built her first functional persona in a single afternoon. A traditional development approach would have required months of requirements gathering, development, and testing.

Educator control: As a history expert, Dr. McCarthy understood nuances that would be difficult to communicate to developers. The ability to directly shape how personas responded meant the historical accuracy remained uncompromised. She could test conversations herself and immediately refine responses that felt anachronistic or oversimplified.

Budget reality: Custom software development for interactive educational AI would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. The no-code solution required only a modest subscription fee, making it accessible within standard departmental budgets without special approval processes.

Ongoing iteration: Education is never static. As Dr. McCarthy learned what worked and what didn’t, she needed to continuously refine the personas. A no-code approach meant these improvements happened immediately rather than going through development cycles and change request processes.

Implementation: Building Without Barriers

Dr. McCarthy’s journey from concept to deployed AI personas took just three weeks, a timeline that would have been impossible with traditional development approaches. Her first build session using Estha’s drag-drop-link interface took about two hours, though most of that time was spent refining the historical voice rather than learning the platform.

The building process followed a logical structure that aligned with how educators naturally think about course content. Rather than writing code or learning complex prompting techniques, Dr. McCarthy used an intuitive visual interface to connect knowledge sources to conversational behaviors. She started with the persona she knew best: Grace O’Malley, the 16th-century Irish pirate queen.

The Five-Step Build Process

1. Persona Foundation: Dr. McCarthy began by uploading her curated collection of primary and secondary sources about Grace O’Malley. This included historical letters, contemporary accounts, and scholarly analyses. The platform processed these materials to create a knowledge base the AI could draw from, ensuring responses would be historically grounded.

2. Voice Development: Using sample dialogues and character descriptions, she defined how Grace O’Malley should communicate. This included her direct speaking style, her pragmatic worldview shaped by life at sea, and her political savvy developed through decades of negotiating with English authorities. The platform’s interface allowed her to provide examples of in-character responses that the AI used as templates.

3. Boundary Setting: Dr. McCarthy established clear parameters for what the persona would and wouldn’t discuss. Grace O’Malley would speak about 16th-century Irish politics, maritime culture, gender dynamics, and her personal experiences, but would acknowledge knowledge limitations about events after her historical period or topics she wouldn’t have known about.

4. Educational Integration: She embedded specific learning objectives into the conversational design. The AI was configured to naturally guide discussions toward key historical themes while allowing student-directed exploration. If students asked about topics tangential to the course objectives, the persona would answer briefly but redirect attention to more relevant areas.

5. Testing and Refinement: Before releasing the persona to students, Dr. McCarthy conducted extensive test conversations, playing the role of students with various learning styles and question types. She refined responses that felt too modern, added depth to areas where the persona’s answers felt superficial, and adjusted the conversational flow to maintain engagement.

What Made It Accessible

Throughout the building process, Dr. McCarthy never encountered a moment where she felt stuck by technical complexity. The platform’s design philosophy centered on educator empowerment rather than technical gatekeeping. When she wanted the persona to emphasize a particular historical interpretation, she simply added more source material supporting that perspective. When she wanted to adjust the conversational tone, she modified example dialogues rather than writing prompt engineering instructions.

The embedding process was equally straightforward. Once the persona was complete, Dr. McCarthy received a simple embed code that her department’s basic web administrator could add to their course management system. Students accessed the historical personas directly from their course homepage, with no separate logins or complicated navigation required.

The Historical Personas That Changed Everything

Encouraged by the success of the Grace O’Malley persona, Dr. McCarthy expanded her project to include five historical figures representing different perspectives on Irish history. Each persona served specific pedagogical purposes while collectively providing a multifaceted view of historical periods and events.

Grace O’Malley: The Pirate Queen (1530-1603)

Grace O’Malley became the flagship persona, representing female agency in a male-dominated era and the complex politics of Gaelic Ireland during English expansion. Students could ask her about maritime economics, gender dynamics, political negotiation strategies, and daily life in 16th-century Ireland. Her responses balanced personal narrative with broader historical context, helping students understand how individual experiences reflected larger social forces.

The persona was programmed to challenge students’ assumptions. When students asked simplified questions about “good guys” and “bad guys” in the English-Irish conflict, Grace would present the nuanced political calculations that actual historical figures had to make. This complexity forced students to move beyond simplistic historical narratives.

Wolfe Tone: The Revolutionary (1763-1798)

The Wolfe Tone persona explored the intellectual foundations of Irish republicanism and the 1798 rebellion. Students engaged with Enlightenment political philosophy, revolutionary strategy, and the tragic consequences of failed uprisings. Tone’s persona was more ideologically driven than Grace O’Malley’s pragmatic character, giving students exposure to different historical personality types.

Dr. McCarthy designed this persona to discuss not just historical events but the ideas that motivated them. Students could explore concepts like religious tolerance, democratic governance, and national identity through conversations that felt personal rather than abstract.

Bridget Cleary: The Fairy Wife (1869-1895)

Bridget Cleary’s persona offered a dramatically different perspective: that of an ordinary woman whose death in 1895 exposed the tensions between modernization and traditional beliefs in rural Ireland. Through conversations with Bridget, students explored folklore, domestic violence, economic change, and the clash between rational modernity and supernatural worldviews.

This persona was particularly powerful for discussing how historical events affected ordinary people rather than political leaders. Bridget’s story opened discussions about gender, superstition, violence, and social change in ways that traditional lectures struggled to achieve.

Michael Collins: The Revolutionary Leader (1890-1922)

Michael Collins represented the revolutionary period and the founding of the Irish Free State. His persona allowed students to explore guerrilla warfare tactics, political negotiation, the Treaty debates, and the tragic civil war that followed independence. Collins’s practical, sometimes ruthless approach to revolution provided a counterpoint to Wolfe Tone’s idealism.

Students could ask Collins about difficult decisions like ordering assassinations, negotiating the Treaty that fell short of a republic, and the moral complexities of revolutionary violence. These conversations developed students’ ability to understand historical actors’ decision-making within their specific contexts.

Constance Markievicz: The Rebel Countess (1868-1927)

Constance Markievicz’s persona explored aristocratic radicalism, women’s suffrage, socialism, and the 1916 Easter Rising. As an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who became a revolutionary socialist and the first woman elected to the British Parliament, her story challenged students’ assumptions about class, gender, and political commitment.

Dr. McCarthy designed this persona to discuss intersectional identities before that term existed. Students could explore how Markievicz navigated her class background, gender, political radicalism, and Irish nationalism in ways that were often contradictory but always fascinating.

The Results: 90% Engagement and Beyond

The impact of the historical persona project exceeded every expectation. When Dr. McCarthy measured student engagement through conversation frequency, depth of questions, time spent with the personas, and quality of subsequent written work, she discovered that 90% of students actively engaged with the AI historical figures beyond the minimum required interactions.

This 90% engagement rate stood in stark contrast to the 34% engagement rate for traditional discussion forums in previous semesters. Students weren’t just checking a box; they were having genuine intellectual experiences that translated into better learning outcomes.

The Numbers That Told the Story

Conversation depth: The average student had 23 distinct conversation sessions with historical personas throughout the semester, compared to an expected minimum of 5 required interactions. Students were voluntarily returning to the personas to explore topics beyond course requirements.

Question quality: Analysis of student questions showed a 67% increase in higher-order thinking questions (analysis, synthesis, evaluation) compared to traditional discussion forums. Students moved from asking “what happened” to asking “why did you choose that” and “how did that feel.”

Time investment: Students spent an average of 47 minutes per week engaging with historical personas, significantly higher than the 12 minutes spent on traditional reading response forums. The self-directed nature of the conversations made the time feel more engaging rather than obligatory.

Assessment performance: Students who actively engaged with the personas scored 18% higher on essay assignments requiring historical empathy and perspective-taking. They demonstrated better understanding of historical context and more nuanced analysis of historical decision-making.

What Students Actually Said

The quantitative data told part of the story, but student feedback revealed the deeper transformation happening through these AI interactions. One student wrote in their end-of-semester evaluation: “For the first time, I understood that historical figures were real people making difficult decisions with imperfect information, not just names and dates to memorize.”

Another student described how the Grace O’Malley persona changed their perception: “I could ask her anything, even stupid questions I’d be embarrassed to ask in class. She made me realize that understanding history means understanding people, and people are complicated.”

Multiple students mentioned that the 24/7 availability of the personas accommodated their learning styles better than scheduled class discussions. International students particularly appreciated the ability to have thoughtful conversations without time zone constraints or concerns about language fluency in real-time discussions.

The personas also reached students who typically remained silent in traditional classroom settings. Introverted students reported feeling more comfortable exploring ideas through written conversation with AI personas than speaking up in class. This democratization of engagement meant more students were actually learning rather than passively attending.

Unexpected Benefits Beyond Engagement

Several positive outcomes emerged that Dr. McCarthy hadn’t anticipated. The personas became diagnostic tools that revealed gaps in student understanding. When multiple students asked similar confused questions, Dr. McCarthy knew she needed to address those topics more clearly in lectures. The AI conversations provided ongoing formative assessment without the burden of grading.

The project also transformed Dr. McCarthy’s own relationship with the material. Building the personas required her to deeply inhabit historical perspectives, leading to new insights that enriched her lectures. The process of anticipating student questions and crafting in-character responses sharpened her own historical thinking.

Finally, the personas created a shared reference point for classroom discussions. Students could reference specific conversations they’d had with Grace O’Malley or Michael Collins, creating a richer collaborative learning environment. The AI interactions didn’t replace human connection; they enhanced it by giving students more to talk about.

What Made This Project Succeed

The UCC historical persona project didn’t succeed simply because the technology worked. Success came from a combination of pedagogical design, technological accessibility, and thoughtful implementation strategies that other educators can learn from and replicate.

Maintaining Educator Expertise at the Center

The no-code approach kept Dr. McCarthy in complete control of the educational experience. She wasn’t translating her pedagogical vision to developers who might misunderstand nuances; she was directly building the learning experience herself. This meant the historical accuracy, educational objectives, and conversational design all reflected her expertise without dilution.

When students engaged with the Grace O’Malley persona, they were essentially engaging with Dr. McCarthy’s deep knowledge of that historical figure, packaged in an interactive format. The AI was a delivery mechanism for educator expertise, not a replacement for it.

Clear Pedagogical Purpose

The personas weren’t technology for technology’s sake. Each served specific learning objectives tied to the course curriculum. Grace O’Malley helped students understand 16th-century Irish maritime culture and gender dynamics. Wolfe Tone helped them grasp Enlightenment political philosophy. Every interaction was designed to advance educational goals.

Dr. McCarthy integrated the personas into assessment structures, requiring students to reference their conversations in essay assignments. This integration signaled that the AI interactions were core to learning, not optional extras, while the open-ended nature of the conversations preserved student agency in how they explored topics.

Commitment to Historical Accuracy

The personas succeeded because they were historically grounded rather than fictional approximations. Dr. McCarthy’s careful curation of source materials meant the AI responses reflected documented historical perspectives. When students asked about topics the historical figure wouldn’t have known about, the persona acknowledged those limitations rather than fabricating answers.

This accuracy built student trust. They knew they were engaging with legitimate historical perspectives, which made the educational value clear. If the personas had felt like historical fan fiction, students would have dismissed them as entertainment rather than learning tools.

Rapid Iteration Based on Student Use

The no-code platform’s flexibility allowed Dr. McCarthy to continuously improve the personas based on actual student interactions. When she noticed students asking questions a persona struggled to answer well, she added more training material in that area. When certain conversation threads proved particularly engaging, she enhanced those dimensions of the persona.

This iterative approach meant the personas got better throughout the semester rather than remaining static. By the final weeks of the course, the AI interactions were significantly more sophisticated than they’d been at launch, refined through real-world use.

Lessons for Other Educators

Dr. McCarthy’s experience at UCC offers valuable lessons for educators considering similar AI integration projects. These insights span both the technical and pedagogical dimensions of creating interactive learning experiences.

Start Small and Expand

Dr. McCarthy’s advice to other educators is simple: start with one well-developed persona rather than trying to build a comprehensive suite immediately. Her first persona, Grace O’Malley, took more time and refinement than the subsequent ones because she was learning the platform and discovering what worked pedagogically.

Once she had one successful persona, expanding to others became much faster. She understood the platform’s capabilities, knew what kinds of source materials worked best, and had developed a feel for how to create engaging conversational characters. Starting small allowed her to build confidence and competence before scaling up.

Invest in Student Orientation

The personas’ success depended partly on students understanding how to use them effectively. Dr. McCarthy spent a full class session introducing the historical persona project, demonstrating good questions versus superficial ones, and discussing how to think critically about AI-generated responses.

She emphasized that the personas were learning tools, not entertainment, and that students should approach conversations with intellectual curiosity. This framing helped students take the experience seriously and engage at a deeper level than they might have otherwise.

Balance Guidance with Freedom

Dr. McCarthy provided suggested conversation topics and starter questions, but she didn’t mandate specific interaction patterns. This balance gave students enough structure to begin productively while preserving the exploratory nature that made the personas engaging.

Students appreciated having suggested topics when they weren’t sure what to ask, but they valued the freedom to pursue their own interests even more. The most meaningful learning often happened when students followed tangential curiosities that connected to their personal interests.

Combine with Traditional Instruction

The historical personas enhanced traditional instruction rather than replacing it. Dr. McCarthy continued lecturing, assigning readings, and facilitating class discussions. The AI interactions added a dimension that traditional methods couldn’t provide, but they worked best when integrated into a comprehensive pedagogical approach.

She used examples from student conversations with personas to enrich class discussions, creating connections between individual exploration and collective learning. This integration made both the AI interactions and the traditional instruction more valuable than either would have been alone.

Expanding the Vision: Future Applications

The success of the UCC historical persona project has inspired expansion plans that extend beyond Dr. McCarthy’s courses. These future applications demonstrate how the core concept can scale and adapt to different educational contexts.

Cross-Departmental Collaboration

UCC’s literature department has begun developing literary character personas that allow students to “interview” figures from novels and plays. The philosophy department is creating personas based on major philosophers, enabling students to debate ethical questions with Kant, Mill, or Confucius. The science department is exploring historical scientist personas to discuss the development of scientific theories and methods.

This cross-departmental adoption demonstrates that the pedagogical approach transcends specific subject matter. Any discipline that benefits from perspective-taking, critical dialogue, or deep engagement with ideas can adapt the model.

Student-Created Personas as Assessments

Dr. McCarthy is piloting a new assessment format where students create their own historical personas as a final project. This assignment requires students to deeply research a historical figure, curate source materials, and make decisions about how to represent that person’s voice and perspective. The process of building the persona becomes a sophisticated demonstration of historical understanding.

Early results suggest that this creation process develops research skills, critical thinking, and historical empathy in ways that traditional essay assignments don’t quite achieve. Students must think carefully about evidence, perspective, and representation, then test their creations through peer interactions.

Alumni and Community Engagement

UCC is exploring making selected historical personas available to the broader public through their website, creating community engagement opportunities beyond enrolled students. Alumni could continue intellectual exploration after graduation, and prospective students could sample the university’s innovative teaching approaches.

This public-facing application positions the university as a leader in educational innovation while providing genuine value to people interested in Irish history regardless of their connection to UCC.

Research on AI-Enhanced Learning

The project has generated rich data about how students interact with AI learning tools, opening research opportunities in educational technology, pedagogy, and historical thinking. Dr. McCarthy is collaborating with UCC’s School of Education to analyze conversation patterns and learning outcomes, contributing to broader understanding of effective AI integration in education.

This research dimension transforms a successful teaching innovation into scholarly contribution, creating a feedback loop where practice informs research and research refines practice.

The UCC historical persona project demonstrates that the barrier to educational AI innovation isn’t technical complexity but rather imagination and willingness to experiment. Dr. Eleanor McCarthy achieved a 90% student engagement rate not because she learned to code or mastered complex AI systems, but because a no-code platform allowed her to focus on what she does best: understanding history and teaching students.

The transformation happened quickly because the technology stepped out of the way. Within three weeks, Dr. McCarthy went from concept to deployed AI personas that fundamentally changed how her students experienced history. The students didn’t just learn more facts; they developed historical empathy, critical thinking skills, and genuine intellectual curiosity about the past.

This case study offers a blueprint for educators across disciplines who want to harness AI’s potential without getting bogged down in technical barriers. The key ingredients are clear pedagogical purpose, commitment to accuracy and quality, willingness to iterate based on student use, and access to tools that empower educators rather than requiring them to become developers.

As education continues evolving in an AI-enabled world, the UCC example shows that the most powerful innovations come when technology amplifies educator expertise rather than attempting to replace it. Dr. McCarthy didn’t need to become a different kind of professional; she needed tools that let her be a better version of the educator she already was.

The 90% engagement rate isn’t just a number. It represents ninety percent of students actively choosing to spend time exploring historical perspectives, asking thoughtful questions, and developing deeper understanding. That’s the ultimate measure of educational success, and it’s now achievable for any educator willing to experiment with AI tools designed for humans, not programmers.