Overview
Generative AI is now part of everyday work whether an organization plans for it or not: it is in the browser, in the office suite, and in the tools employees already use. The real question is not whether your people will use it but whether they will use it well: knowing what it is good for, catching its mistakes, and keeping sensitive information out of it. That baseline of practical AI literacy across the whole workforce is what this course builds.
This is a hands-on, foundation course. It assumes nothing: no technical background and no prior use of AI tools. It deliberately teaches a small set of skills deeply rather than racing through features, because a workforce that has genuinely practiced ten good habits beats one that has heard about a hundred. The gradient runs from understanding what generative AI is, to using it well on real tasks, to judging its output and using it safely. Every module includes a hands-on lab and builds on the one before.
Who Should Attend
- Employees in any role who will use, or already use, generative AI tools at work
- Teams receiving access to an AI assistant and needing a shared, safe baseline
- Anyone who has avoided AI tools and wants a practical, judgment-free starting point
Those wanting to go deeper on specific assistants afterward should look at Everyday AI: Boosting Productivity with ChatGPT and Claude.
Prerequisites
- None. No technical background or prior AI experience is assumed
What You Will Learn
- Explain what generative AI is and is not, in plain language
- Write clear requests that get genuinely useful answers
- Apply an AI assistant to everyday tasks: writing, summarizing, brainstorming, and learning
- Judge AI output, spot errors, and verify before relying on an answer
- Recognize what is safe to share with an AI tool and what never is
- Build sustainable personal habits for working with AI
Course Outline
Day one: what it is and how to use it
- What Generative AI Is (and Is Not)
- A plain-language explanation of how these tools work
- Common myths, from magic to menace, and the calmer reality
- Lab: a guided first working session with an AI assistant
- Getting Useful Answers
- Why vague requests get vague answers: giving the tool a proper brief
- Following up: refining an answer instead of settling for the first one
- Lab: take real tasks from your own work and improve the answers through better asking
- Everyday Uses in Your Job
- Writing and rewriting: emails, summaries, and first drafts
- Brainstorming, planning, and learning something new quickly
- Lab: apply the assistant to three genuine tasks from your own job
Day two: judgment, safety, and habit
- Judging the Output
- Hallucination: why AI states wrong things confidently
- A simple verification habit: when to trust, when to check, when to skip AI entirely
- Lab: fact-check a set of AI answers and find the planted errors
- Where to Be Careful
- Sensitive data: what should never go into an AI tool
- Company policy, confidentiality, and using AI honestly in your work
- Lab: sort realistic workplace scenarios into safe and unsafe, and explain why
- Making It a Habit
- Building AI into your week without depending on it blindly
- Keeping up as the tools change, and sharing what works with your team
- Lab: create a personal AI habit plan with a reusable set of go-to requests
Extended Version
The three-day version keeps the same gradient and adds depth and practice:
- A deeper practice day applying the skills to each attendee's specific role
- More work on writing effective requests, connecting to Prompt Writing for Business Users
- Working with documents and data: summarizing, comparing, and extracting safely
- A capstone in which each attendee demonstrates an AI-assisted improvement to one of their real tasks