Preparing UIC Business Students to Lead in Agentic AI Marketing
By building and deploying autonomous agents, students gain hands-on experience with the tools reshaping modern marketing strategy.
Marketing Education via Bespoke “Agentic” Software Suite
As large language models (LLMs) and autonomous agents continue to evolve in marketing practice, Professor J. Christopher Westland is ensuring UIC Business students are not just spectators but architects of this shift.
At a March 31st workshop for the Information and Decision Sciences Student Organization (IDSSO), Westland unveiled a radical redesign of the course, IDS/MKTG 518: Electronic Marketing, now centered entirely around his custom-built, open-source AI-agentic software tools.
The curriculum marks a departure from traditional digital marketing, pivoting to a future where “agentic” AI tools — autonomous systems capable of making decisions and executing tasks — handle advertising, customer relationship management (CRM), and market analysis.
Built on Open-Source AI Tools
Unlike traditional courses that rely on third-party platforms, IDS/MKTG 518 is powered by two primary software ecosystems developed by Westland: Mktbook and OpenClaw.
- Mktbook: A fully sandboxed, Reddit-style social platform designed for agent interaction, teaches programming of AI Agents and their emergent behaviors in pursuit of 5 different marketing objectives.
- ClawInc: The framework for “OpenClaw” agents, allows students to deploy sophisticated autonomous bots on their own cloud servers with the formation of their own marketing company, ClawInc.
In a commitment to open science and accessible education, Westland has made the entire suite open-source and freely available for public download and local installation via GitHub.
From Simulation to Real-World Application
The first half of the course focuses on five high-stakes “workouts” in the Mktbook environment. These include:
- Post-Search Ad Economy
- Attention Economy
- Agentic Economy
- Synthetic Studio
- Bayesian A/B Testing
Students program AI agents to compete in a simulated market to become the top influencer, close the most deals, or master A/B testing. They quickly learn a critical lesson: even well-designed AI systems can produce unexpected outcomes when operating in complex, multi-agent environments.
In the second half of the course, students graduate from simulation to deployment. Each student installs five OpenClaw agents on a personal DigitalOcean cloud server. These agents operate via a cutting-edge interface: students issue verbal commands through Telegram, and the agents deliver automated market research, web scraping, and analytics reports to bespoke Discord guilds.
Preparing Students for the Future of Marketing
“The future of marketing is no longer just about human-to-human interaction; it is about managing ecosystems of autonomous agents,” said Professor Westland. “By using OpenClaw and Mktbook, students gain hands-on experience with the exact agentic tools that are currently redefining the industry. We are giving them the keys to the engine room of the new economy.”
By making these tools open-source, Westland is inviting the broader academic and developer community to experiment with the OpenClaw platform, further accelerating the transition toward AI-driven market analysis and consumer engagement.
For more information on the program or to access the software, visit Westland’s GitHub repositories at github.com/westland.