AI at Work: The Practical Skills Course

What you will be able to do

• Write prompts that get a usable result the first time, and know how to fix the ones that do not.
• Draft, edit, and summarize with AI without sounding like a robot or shipping a mistake.
• Use AI in Excel and Sheets for formulas, cleaning, and analysis, and check the numbers.
• Run grounded research with your own documents and verify what comes back.
• Build automations with an AI step, and a simple internal tool without writing code.
• Write a team AI policy and evaluate a vendor in an afternoon.
• Finish with a 90-day plan and measured time savings you can show your manager.

Curriculum

1. 1AI foundations for professionalsHow modern AI works in plain English, what it does well and badly, the three tools worth setting up today, the privacy rules that keep you out of trouble, and a daily habit loop that makes AI part of how you work.45 min · Free preview
2. 2Prompting that worksThe five-part prompt structure, how to steer a draft instead of starting over, showing the model examples, making it ask you questions first, choosing output formats, and building a personal prompt library.55 min
3. 3Your AI toolkitHow to choose a primary assistant among ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot, configure memory and custom assistants, work with files and grounded research tools, use mobile, voice, desktop, and browser versions, and match each tool to the task.50 min
4. 4Writing and communicationUsing AI for email, documents, proposals, executive summaries, editing, meeting follow-ups, and presentation outlines while keeping your own voice and checking what matters before it leaves your hands.55 min
5. 5Data, spreadsheets, and analysisGetting reliable help from AI in Excel and Google Sheets: formulas and scripts you can test, uploading and cleaning CSVs, explaining data and building charts, sanity-checking every number, and writing analysis narratives for decision-makers.60 min
6. 6Research and knowledge workUse search-grounded AI, grounded Q&A over your own documents, and layered summaries to research faster, then verify every citation before it reaches a decision.55 min
7. 7Automating your workflowClimb the automation ladder from saved prompts to custom assistants to Zapier, Make, or n8n workflows with AI steps, build a form-to-triage-to-Slack automation, and keep a human in the loop where it counts.60 min
8. 8Building simple tools without codeDescribe a tool in plain language, build a calculator, dashboard, or internal form with Claude or ChatGPT artifacts, Lovable, or Replit, put it somewhere people can use it, and know exactly where the limits are.60 min
9. 9AI safety, security, and policyClassify data before it touches an AI tool, recognize prompt injection, AI-written phishing, and deepfakes, handle copyright, bias, and disclosure sensibly, and write a one-page team policy plus a vendor checklist.60 min
10. 10Your 90-day AI planThe capstone: audit a week of your work, choose three workflows, build a prompt library and one automation, measure the time you saved, teach a colleague, and present results, with templates for every step.60 min

How it works

1. Lessons you read in 10 to 20 minutes, each with a worked example from real work.
2. Exercises you do in your own tools, with copy-ready prompts, so every module leaves something behind: a saved prompt, an assistant, an automation.
3. A short quiz per module to lock in the ideas, and a certificate when you finish.

Your instructor