AI Strategy: Benefits of Personalization

This course can be applied toward the UBC Micro-certificate in AI Powered Automation and Personalization and the UBC Certificate in Artificial Intelligence in Digital Media.

This course combines implementation strategy with a critical thinking approach for immediate application in your current work.

Sophisticated AI algorithms and machine learning techniques are making personalization a standard feature of our online experiences. Take a deep dive into AI-powered personalization, exploring its wide-ranging applications and benefits for organizations across sectors including media, retail, healthcare, finance and education. Understand the processes and tools needed to implement AI personalization in business or personal projects, and the industry best practices that guide its ethical and responsible use.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Explain the fundamentals of AI-powered personalization and how it enhances user experiences
• Identify the potential benefits of AI personalization to businesses and their audiences, including optimizing customer engagement and retention, fostering stronger relationships and improving business outcomes
• Use AI to predict user behaviour, improve decision-making processes and create and automate personalized content and experiences
• Describe various AI techniques and models used for content creation, and evaluate their strengths and limitations
• Collect and analyze user inputs and outputs to inform personalized content creation
• Design experiments to test the effectiveness of personalized content created using AI algorithms
• Identify successful examples of AI-driven personalization and emerging trends
• Analyze the ethical implications of AI personalization and develop guidelines for its responsible and appropriate use
• Create a personalized content creation strategy

Technical and coding skills are not required. This course uses practical “no-code” platforms to help students build solid AI tool logic and the practical skills for implementation. Platform and tool selection varies and is regularly updated to align with current industry trends, and has included Zapier, HeyGen, Sora, Voiceflow, RunwayML, Airtable, Make, and Botpress, among others.

Course outline

Week 1: Introduction to AI and Personalization

This module explores the power of AI-driven personalization and its growing role in shaping user experiences across industries. Learners will examine key paradigms such as user-centric vs. system-centric approaches and the balance between internal and external strategies. The objective is to understand how personalization creates value, enhances engagement, and drives strategic outcomes in a digital-first world.

Week 2: Implementing Personalization with AI

This module focuses on the practical implementation of AI-powered personalization to create dynamic, customer-centered experiences across industries. It explores the evolving relationship between personalization and customer experience, with marketing as a core use case, while introducing key tools like machine learning, predictive analytics and frameworks such as Next Best Action. Learners will gain actionable insights to design, test and optimize AI-driven strategies that enhance engagement, loyalty and business growth.

Week 3: Maximizing benefits with AI personalization

This module explores how AI-powered workflow automation can address the challenges of delivering personalized experiences at scale. Learners will examine key tools like Zapier and Make.com to design adaptive workflows that streamline tasks and respond to user behavior in real time. By combining strategic thinking with hands-on practice, participants will gain the skills to build efficient, scalable personalization systems aligned with organizational goals.

Week 4: Ethical considerations and the future of AI personalization 

This final module explores the ethical dimensions of AI-driven personalization, emphasizing the importance of balancing innovation with responsibility. Learners will examine key challenges such as privacy, bias and autonomy, while exploring strategies for designing fair, transparent and inclusive systems. Through real-world case studies and future-facing insights, the module equips participants to navigate personalization ethically in an evolving digital landscape.

How am I assessed?

You will be assessed on successfully completing weekly activities, including exercises, quizzes, applied case study projects (based on real-life scenarios) and your contributions to online discussion posts. These activities are marked using a proficiency scale, and your instructor provides you informal feedback during live online sessions.

While you are not assessed on your attendance of the live online sessions, we encourage you to attend so you can learn and interact with your instructor and other participants. All sessions are recorded in case you miss one.

This course operates on a pass/fail basis. You must achieve an overall grade of 70% or greater to pass and be eligible to earn the UBC Micro-certificate in AI Powered Automation and Personalization.

Expected effort

Expect to spend five to seven hours per week completing all learning activities, including attending the live online sessions.

Technology requirements

To take this course, you need access to:

• an email account
• a computer, laptop or tablet
• the latest version of a web browser (or previous major version release)
• a reliable internet connection
• a video camera and microphone

Course format

This 100% online program is instructor supported with weekly online classes.

Outside of class, you can access online materials on your own time. Each week, review readings and videos, and apply your knowledge in exercises and case studies. Contribute to an online discussion board and connect with other students.

One business day before the course start date, we’ll email you step-by-step instructions for accessing your course.