Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Jan Kietzmann, Beedie School of Business

Project team: Jeannette Paschen, research assistant

Timeframe: January 2017 to April 2017

Funding: $6,000  

Final report: View Jan Kietzmann's final report (PDF)

Description: I teach Management Information Systems (MIS) to our undergraduate and graduate students. As a field that moves forward very quickly, MIS places high demands on instructors to stay current in order to teach relevant topics that will equip our students with knowledge from which they will benefit a) when they apply for work and b) once they enter the workforce.

One of the most significant technological advancements today is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Within this domain, a particular tool, named Watson and developed by IBM, shows us how powerful AI can be for organizational decision-making. The power of Watson offers tremendous value for content analysis in general, as it is able to process both structured and unstructured data, like human speech. The use of AI is of course most applicable when data sets are so large or complex than traditional data processing methods and applications cannot deal with them (a phenomenon known as Big Data).

Rather than teaching AI as an abstract topic, or through the use of these real world examples, I would like to develop a graduate course in which students will be required to apply AI to a real world scenario. I anticipate that students would:

1. learn about Artificial Intelligence and Big Data
2. use Watson to solve an organizational problem, for instance by analyzing market data, customer data, or sales data.
3. analyze results and develop organizational strategy based on their findings
4. critically evaluate the pros and cons of artificial intelligence from a social, ethical and organizational perspective.

Knowledge sharing: I would like to present at one of the Beedie’s Teaching and Learning events. Also, with David Rubeli, Educational Consultant, TLC, we might be able to develop a creative dissemination tool, e.g., a short video in which we summarize what we did.

AI is already changing how we, as managers, make organizational decisions. It is not only becoming a hot topic among managers, but also among fellow educators who, I believe, would benefit from hearing about this assignment and how it introduces AI to students. I would like to present the findings generated with the help of this TLDG at one of the many MIS or Management/Marketing conferences.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; management information systems; MIS; business; decision-making; Watson; project pedagogy; survey; pre post measures; applied learning; management information systems; marketing management; machine learning; big data; organizational decision-making