Prospectus

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AI for Business

Course
2024-2025

Admission requirements

Third-year Bachelor students
A working understading of coding

Description

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the ways organizations are performing and making decisions. This course analyzes relevant aspects of AI and how AI influences firms decisions and stakeholders. This course introduces some of the most popular AI tools, focusing on these methods' intuitions and exploring their business applications to real-life business cases. This course adopts a hands-on approach in implementing these AI tools using Python, a powerful programming language used widely to tackle and solve machine learning problems. To sum, the course helps students to understand, analyze, and tackle business problems using AI tools.

Note: This course uses Python as the coding language for all the class assignments, the group project, and the individual assignment. Therefore, completing the course requires a knowledge of Python. The course does not explicitly teach how to code in Python; rather, it focuses on applying AI techniques to business problems using Python. The course does not require students to know Python ahead of time, but the students need to learn this language during the class — there will be ample learning resources. This might be an immense effort for people who don't have any coding experience.

Course objectives

Upon successful completion, students will be able to:

  • articulate and explain key concepts of AI;

  • describe the transformative impact of AI on the businesses and competition;

  • select and implement suitable machine learning techniques to address specific business challenges;

  • Evaluate the fairness implications and human-centric considerations when deploying AI solutions in a business context;

  • compare and contrast AI business models and explain how AI impacts business models and corporate strategy;

  • develop a prototype solution to a business problem using AI tools;

  • articulate and present AI solutions.

Timetable

In MyTimetable, you can find all course and programme schedules, allowing you to create your personal timetable. Activities for which you have enrolled via MyStudyMap will automatically appear in your timetable.

Additionally, you can easily link MyTimetable to a calendar app on your phone, and schedule changes will be automatically updated in your calendar. You can also choose to receive email notifications about schedule changes. You can enable notifications in Settings after logging in.

Questions? Watch the video, read the instructions, or contact the ISSC helpdesk.

Note: Joint Degree students from Leiden/Delft need to combine information from both the Leiden and Delft MyTimetables to see a complete schedule. This video explains how to do it.

Mode of instruction

The course emphasizes interactive teaching. Classes start with a brief reflection on the past sessions. Then, it reviews the session’s reading(s) and discusses relevant AI methods. In the second half, the lecture focuses on a real-life case and uses Python to explore the session’s topic in practice. The session ends with a summary.

Assessment method

The course assessment details are as follows:

  • In-class activities and quizzes: 40%

  • Group Project: 30%

  • Individual assignement: 30%

Please note that the grade for a non-completed assignment is 0.
Group work is an integral part of the course. You will be expected to form a team in the first week of the course and complete the group project in your team.

Reading list

The reading list will be announced on Brightspace.

Registration

As a student, you are responsible for enrolling on time through MyStudyMap.

In this short video, you can see step-by-step how to enrol for courses in MyStudyMap.
Extensive information about the operation of MyStudyMap can be found here.

There are two enrolment periods per year:

  • Enrolment for the fall opens in July

  • Enrolment for the spring opens in December

See this page for more information about deadlines and enrolling for courses and exams.

Note:

  • It is mandatory to enrol for all activities of a course that you are going to follow.

  • Your enrolment is only complete when you submit your course planning in the ‘Ready for enrolment’ tab by clicking ‘Send’.

  • Not being enrolled for an exam/resit means that you are not allowed to participate in the exam/resit.

  • This course can only be followed as part of the Artificial Intelligence and Business minor and Informatica en Economie.

Contact

info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl

Remarks

  • Students are responsible for enrolling/unenrolling themselves for (partial) exams/retakes.

  • Students who do not enroll themselves for an exam/retake by the deadline are not allowed to take the exam/retake.

  • Students fail the course if the overal grade is below 5.0.

  • The final grade is expressed as a whole or half number between 1.0 and 10.0, including both limits. The result is not to be expressed as a number between 5.0 and 6.0.

  • If one of the components of the final mark constitutes a component that assesses attendance or class participation, students cannot take a retake for this component. Therefore, students fail the course if their mark for this component is less than 4.0.

  • Partial grades, inclusive the exam grade will not be rounded. If partial grades will be communicated, it is possible partial grades are rounded, but unrounded partial grades will be used in the calculation of the final grade. The final grade will be rounded at 0.5 (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).

  • It is not possible to do retakes for group assignments. Therefore, if students fail the group assignment component, they fail the course.

  • Students pass the course if the final mark is 6.0 or higher (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).

  • For courses, for which class participation is an assessment component, students may not be penalised for an absence if the student has a legitimate justification for this absence. The student must notify the program coordinator via email (info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl) of such an absence BEFORE the lecture, describing the reason for missing the lecture. If the student does not notify the program coordinator before the lecture, the student will be penalised. Students may be required to provide further documentation to substantiate their case, and class attendance requirements are only waived under exceptional circumstances such as illness.

  • Students who are entitled to more exam/retake time must report to info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl 10 days before the exam/retake takes place.

Software
Starting from the 2024/2025 academic year, the Faculty of Science will use the software distribution platform Academic Software. Through this platform, you can access the software needed for specific courses in your studies. For some software, your laptop must meet certain system requirements, which will be specified with the software. It is important to install the software before the start of the course. More information about the laptop requirements can be found on the student website.