AI for Business

This certificate is designed for non-technical working professionals who need to lead with AI, not build it. No coding or technical background is required or expected. It's an especially strong fit for:

• Working professionals who want to gain practical, immediately applicable AI skills.
• Managers and individual contributors across functions — marketing, operations, finance, HR, accounting, strategy — who want to apply AI to their own discipline.
• Team and people leaders responsible for deciding whether and how their group adopts AI, and for doing so responsibly.
• Professionals navigating AI governance, risk, or compliance who need a working grasp of the current regulatory landscape.
• Anyone who has experimented with AI tools but wants to move from casual use to confident, verifiable, responsible practice — and to identify where AI can create real value in their own work.

By the end of this certificate, you will be able to:

• Distinguish the major categories of AI tools, understanding how to select the right one for a given business task instead of defaulting to whatever is most familiar.
• Engineer clear, structured prompts that reliably turn AI from a novelty into a dependable work partner.
• Verify AI output as a hypothesis rather than a fact, catching hallucinations, bias, and false confidence before they reach a decision.
• Apply AI to concrete use cases across marketing, operations, finance, and HR. You will recognize where it adds value versus where it falls short.
• Evaluate AI opportunities and risks holistically across an organization, weighing privacy, fairness, and compliance alongside upside.
• Govern AI use responsibly and legally, applying real frameworks and current regulations to protect people, data, and the business.
• Identify and justify a high-value AI opportunity in your own business context, including a defensible estimate of value and a plan for adoption.

Week 1: Foundational AI & Data Literacy

Decisions rest on technical reality, not hype.

• The current AI landscape for business;
• Generative vs. predictive vs. retrieval tools;
• The role and risks of data;
• The real costs of AI (licensing, compute, environmental footprint);
• A tour of the three tools we'll use all term.
• Applied Use Case: Marketing. Students take one marketing task (e.g., drafting campaign copy vs. segmenting an audience) and decide which type of AI tool fits each, then test theirhypothesis live.

Week 2: Critical Inquiry & Analytical Judgment

Treat AI output as a hypothesis, not a fact.

• The Push-Back Protocol ("What's your evidence? What are you assuming? What's an alternative?");
• Source triangulation;
• Why AI fabricates citations;
• Prompt engineering fundamentals (role · task · context · format · audience · constraints);
• Iterating toward quality;
• Defining "good" for a tool that answers differently each time.
• Applied Use Case: Finance. Students take an AI-generated summary of a public company's earnings or financial report and verify each quantitative claim against the primary source document.

Week 3: Ethical Stewardship & Responsible AI

Risk, compliance, fairness, privacy, and human dignity — the Vincentian core.

• Privacy and confidentiality (what not to upload);
• The data-protection landscape —GDPR, U.S. state privacy laws (e.g., CCPA/CPRA), and FERPA in an educational context;
• Bias and fairness, and why biased data produces biased decisions;
• Transparency and disclosure;
• The current AI-in-employment and AI-governance regulatory picture (see
• Responsible-AI grounding below);
• Aligning practice with DePaul's Vincentian commitment to human dignity.
• Applied Use Case: Human Resources. Students examine an AI hiring/promotion scenario through the lens of Illinois's new AI employment law (HB 3773), testing an AI-generatedscreening rationale for bias and for legal exposure.

Week 4: Human-Centric Innovation & Creativity

You are the pilot; AI is the co-pilot.

• Human-AI orchestration vs. wholesale delegation;
• The "does this make me think, or just prompt?" test;
• Identifying repetitive, low-judgment tasks; building a custom bot with a defined role and knowledge;
• Meeting AI for summaries and action items; keeping a human in the loop.
• Applied Use Case: Operations. Students map a recurring operations workflow (e.g., astatus report or a process handoff) and decide, step by step, what AI can own and what ahuman must own.

Week 5: Strategic Business Expertise

Applying AI to the bottom line — across disciplines.

• This is where the four functions converge. Students work in (or rotate through) function-themed scenarios, then step up a level to strategy: building the business case, estimating value and ROI in plain terms, total-cost-of-ownership thinking (licensing, training, integration, oversight), risk registers, and change management for AI adoption.
• Applied Use Case: All four functions. Function-aligned breakouts (marketing /operations / finance / HR) each take a realistic scenario and produce a one-paragraph valuecase, then present the cross-function pattern back to the room.

Week 6: Final Project Studio & Presentations

Bringing it together.

• Short individual presentations;
• Peer feedback against the rubric;
• A closing reflection on responsible adoption and next steps back at work.

What is BoodleBox?

BoodleBox is a collaborative AI platform built specifically for higher education. The core idea is a single interface that gives you access to multiple premium AI models at once. You can use the latest versions of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and more through one interface, and even orchestrate several models within a single conversation. BoodleBox is aimed squarely at education rather than being a general-purpose tool. On the privacy side, which matters for student work, it's FERPA compliant and SOC 2 certified, and it doesn't train AI models on your data.

What is Copilot Chat?

Copilot Chat is the entry-level, chat-based tier of Microsoft's Copilot family. Logging in with DePaul credentials provides enterprise data protection. Prompts and responses aren't used to train models. Unlike the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot, it isn't grounded in your organization's files, email, and chats.

What is Zoom AI Companion?

Zoom AI Companion is Zoom's native AI assistant that provides meeting summaries, realtime transcription, smart recordings, and AI-powered chat assistance, embedded directly into the Zoom apps. AI Companion does not use customer content to train its models or third-party models. Under the hood, Zoom uses a federated approach. Rather than sticking to one AI model, it mixes its own AI with models from other companies and picks the best tool for the job.

What is Flex?

A Flex (commonly referred to in the literature as “HyFlex”) course is taught in a technology-enhanced classroom that allows for students and guests to remotely connect via Zoom and actively participate with students and faculty in the physical classroom. This modality is highly desired by students who enjoy learning in the classroom but want the flexibility to connect online when work or family responsibilities prevent them from traveling to campus. You can attend on campus or remotely via Zoom. You don’t need to commit to one particular mode of attendance – you can choose on the day what works best for you.

Can I attend remotely?

Yes. You can attend remotely for all classes over the six weeks, or for some. You will need a computer (webcam, microphone, speakers) running the current version of Zoom to connect.

Can I attend on campus?

Yes. You can attend on campus for all classes over the six weeks, or for some.

Are there course materials?

There are no required books for this course. Comprehensive handouts and videos are provided on the the course website.

Is there required software?

Projects will require the use of free and freemium software. Instructions on how to download and use the software will be provided online. You may need administrator access to install these on your computer

Is this class very technical?

Some of the topics are technical but are described in a way that a non-technical person can understand. At every stage theory is integrated with the technology – we aim to provide insight for technical and non-technical participants.

Do I need a computer?

You will need access to a computer (Windows or macOS) and a reliable (broadband) connection to the internet. You should bring a laptop to campus, but it is not required.

Do I get DePaul credit for these classes?

No, but some have been approved for continuing education units (CEUs). These classes are professional education classes, with different requirements than courses taken for academic credit.

How big are the classes?

Class size is limited. Most classes have about 15-20 students.

Will I have to write papers and take exams?

You will have an optional assignment each week, which will not be graded, but you will receive feedback. At the end of the course, you will have a Final Project Brief.

Do I have to make a final presentation?

Yes. The final presentation is required to receive your certificate for the program.

How do I access the course website?

The course website is hosted at: http://ce.depaul.edu

James presents regularly at online learning and teaching conferences (Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, Annual Sloan-C International Conference) and at DePaul. A list of selected presentations and publications is available on this website, https://condor.depaul.edu/jmoore/. 

Moore holds a BA in economics and information technology from Middlesex University in England and an MS in telecommunications, with a computer science concentration, from DePaul University. He has published chapters on search engine optimization and paid search for the "IMC Handbook" (2008, 2010 and 2014). His teaching has been recognized with the Kellstadt Marketing Center Distinguished Professional Educator Award For Excellence in Teaching (2009 and 2013) and the Schullo Best Distance Teaching Practices Award (2018).