Ben Collier, PhD Book a call →free, 15 minutes

Talks

Talks

Talks and workshops on building AI courses, teaching with AI, and putting analytics to work.

August 7, 2026 · Tepper AI-Exchange · Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

Lessons Learned from Developing New AI Courses for MBA and Undergraduate Business Students

Over the past year I designed and taught a new MBA elective, AI Methods for Social and Visual Data, and I was developing an undergraduate course, Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders, launching that fall. In this talk I shared what has worked well in the MBA classroom, from assignment design to helping students build hands-on skills with modern AI tools, along with what I was changing or trying differently in the new undergraduate course. I also gave a brief introduction to a large randomized controlled trial of AI in the classroom that I am taking part in, and what we hope to learn from it about how AI actually affects student outcomes.

The session closed as a discussion with the faculty in the room: what they would add to the undergraduate course, what did not fit, and how Tepper should approach a flagship AI course for undergraduates.

Selected slides

Slide: From AI Methods for Social and Visual Data: MBA students learn how Vision Transformers apply attention to image patches.
From AI Methods for Social and Visual Data: MBA students learn how Vision Transformers apply attention to image patches.
Slide: From AI Methods for Social and Visual Data: a joint embedding space where images and text sit side by side.
From AI Methods for Social and Visual Data: a joint embedding space where images and text sit side by side.
Slide: From AI Methods for Social and Visual Data: the Tesla Vision versus Waymo case, cameras against lidar and radar.
From AI Methods for Social and Visual Data: the Tesla Vision versus Waymo case, cameras against lidar and radar.
Slide: How AI Methods for Social and Visual Data maps to Bloom's taxonomy: quizzes for remembering, labs for applying, the final project and AI in the News for creating.
How AI Methods for Social and Visual Data maps to Bloom's taxonomy: quizzes for remembering, labs for applying, the final project and AI in the News for creating.
Slide: From Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders: muffin or chihuahua? You can spot it. Now write the rule.
From Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders: muffin or chihuahua? You can spot it. Now write the rule.
Slide: From Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders: agent = model + harness, the idea behind the course's agent unit.
From Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders: agent = model + harness, the idea behind the course's agent unit.

June 5, 2025 · Teaching with AI Summer Workshop · Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

AI Data Visualization Coach

A flash talk with my colleague Zoey Jiang on the custom GPT we built for Data Visualization. Before presenting a chart redesign, teams test it with the coach. It will not hand over a redesign. It questions the team from three seats: a journalist, a chart designer, and a business stakeholder.

Workshop program

Selected slides

Slide: The experiment: treatment teams revise news charts with the AI coach before presenting; control teams revise without it.
The experiment: treatment teams revise news charts with the AI coach before presenting; control teams revise without it.
Slide: Why feedback can backfire: Kluger and DeNisi's model of where feedback helps and where it hurts.
Why feedback can backfire: Kluger and DeNisi's model of where feedback helps and where it hurts.
Slide: A chart a team brought in, with the strengths and problems they found.
A chart a team brought in, with the strengths and problems they found.
Slide: The same data after the coach's questions: a diverging bar, direct labels, and color that carries meaning.
The same data after the coach's questions: a diverging bar, direct labels, and color that carries meaning.
Slide: The coach's recommendation on another team's chart, with what improved and what still needs work.
The coach's recommendation on another team's chart, with what improved and what still needs work.
Slide: What students reported: 97 percent said the coach gave them incorrect or conflicting feedback at least once, which is part of the lesson.
What students reported: 97 percent said the coach gave them incorrect or conflicting feedback at least once, which is part of the lesson.

April 30, 2026 · Tepper School of Business

Faculty Spotlight: what students learn in the MS in Business Analytics

Ben Collier explaining a point during the Tepper Faculty Spotlight conversation Faculty Spotlight · 11 min

A conversation for Tepper about the MS in Business Analytics curriculum, and why I describe business analytics as a decathlon.

Watch on YouTube

Before that

Earlier talks

Ask about a talk or workshop I speak to faculty, executive, and industry audiences about AI in business and in the classroom.