Professor Vishal Sachdev

Vishal Sachdev is a clinical associate professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has served as director of the Illinois MakerLab, a 3D Printing Lab, since 2013, and the academic director of the new MS in Business Analytics program since 2021. He is also a Faculty in Residence at the Discovery Partners Institute in 2023-2024.

His primary area of focus lies in the applications of Blockchain and AI. Over time, he has been actively teaching courses on blockchain and web3, recently completing a comprehensive blockchain analytics course. He is currently engaged in establishing a network of students who will contribute to research in this field alongside faculty members. Grants from various protocols and foundations, including Solana and Filecoin, and others support their research endeavors.

Recently, he has been focusing on experiments in leveraging LLMs in education, with some prototypes built for use by students and teachers. He is also a member of a task force dedicated to exploring the applications of AI, particularly ChatGPT, in the field of education at the Gies College of Business.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Reimagining an undergraduate course using AI tools.

• The AI technologies used to enable a course.

• Lessons learned as a professor teaching the first class using AI.

• How the classroom experience will evolve in the near future.

• How curriculums will be changing now that knowledge is free and accessible.

• The role of a teacher as a curator and community manager.

• How students should approach learning using AI.

• Recommendations to professors and instructors on how to get started bringing AI into a course experience.

• Reflection on Ethan Mollick’s “Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class.”

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.