North Columbus News

The Ohio State University has introduced new courses aimed at helping small business owners learn how to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The courses are part of the university’s AI Fluency Initiative, which is also bringing AI education into the undergraduate curriculum this year.

The initiative seeks to prepare students not only to use AI tools but also to understand and innovate with them. In addition, Ohio State is offering specific courses for small business owners such as “Intro to Generative AI,” “AI for Customer Success,” and “AI for Marketing.”

Jessica Phillips, senior director of Professional and Continuing Education in the Office of Academic Affairs, explained that the goal is to help small business owners find ways to use technology to increase efficiency. “AI has been transformational and we’re now at a place where small businesses have a really significant opportunity to maximize their impact and their success by leveraging AI,” she said.

According to data from the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council), about 40 percent of businesses are already using AI for marketing and sales growth. Most small businesses do not have large teams dedicated to marketing, IT, or customer service, Phillips noted. “You’re sort of doing the best that you can to support your customers, your partners and your clients, and to do it in a way that is effective and efficient because you’re working with maybe not an infinite amount of resources.”

The SBE Council also reports that 91 percent of small business owners consider AI tools essential for staying competitive.

“There’s this major opportunity to take advantage of artificial intelligence to make processes more streamlined, to essentially make it as if you have a large team doing some of these core operations of a small business,” Phillips said. “As a small business owner, this is the way to help you compete with other small businesses, with large corporations, and to grow, and to more effectively connect with your audience.”

Phillips said the courses are suitable for participants with different levels of experience using AI. “We recognize that not every small business owner has an IT background or has experience with artificial intelligence. What we’ve done is frontload the beginning of this pathway with a course for people who don’t have experience with AI,” she said.

“It’s an introduction to generative AI for the more nontechnical learner or someone who’s just curious about how it could be taken advantage of in their profession. This is a great place to start if you are a small business owner with limited experience with AI.”

Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business Executive Education unit also offers on-campus workshops and online courses for business owners and professionals including topics like “AI-Enabled Marketing,” “Generative AI and the Future of Supply Chain,” “AI Prompt Engineering,” “Leading Change in the Age of AI,” and “AI-Enabled Sales.”

“This effort to help support small businesses is a modern expression of our land-grant mission as a university,” Phillips said. “This is the way that we’re supporting the learners, the businesses, the startups in Ohio and beyond. My team, in particular — the Professional and Continuing Education team — we are working across the institution to help elevate and advance continuing education to better support the workforce of Ohio, our alumni and beyond.”

More information about these new offerings can be found at go.osu.edu/learnAI. Details about Fisher Executive Education programs are available at go.osu.edu/ExecEd.