Welcome to AI — Your First Conversation
Discover what AI chatbots are, write your very first prompt, and take your first steps into a technology that will change how you learn.
Open sessionFree Twenty-Session Course
Most graduate students under thirty already use AI. You can too.
AI Essentials is a self-paced course for adult graduate students: twenty short sessions, six platforms, video lessons, no credit card, no subscriptions, and no experience required.
What you’ll learn
This course teaches one essential skill: how to communicate with AI effectively. We go slowly and use real examples from graduate work.
- Use six different AI platforms with confidence
- Write structured prompts for academic work
- Apply AI to research, writing, citations, and revision
- Use AI ethically in scholarship
- Build complete research-and-writing workflows
Twenty steady steps.
The Anatomy of a Good Prompt
Learn why some prompts produce amazing results and others fall flat — and discover the three-part structure that makes every prompt more effective.
Open sessionExploring a New AI — Google Gemini
Meet your second AI platform, understand how Gemini differs from ChatGPT, and learn to evaluate AI tools by comparing their responses side by side.
Open sessionMeet Claude — AI for Thoughtful Writing
Explore Claude, an AI renowned for its careful reasoning and nuanced responses, and learn the power of specifying your audience to transform any explanation.
Open sessionGiving AI a Role — The Power of Persona Prompts
Discover how assigning a role or persona to ChatGPT transforms its responses — and learn one of the most powerful prompt techniques for getting expert-level guidance.
Open sessionAI-Powered Research with Perplexity
Discover Perplexity — the AI research tool that searches the web and cites its sources — and learn why citations are essential for trustworthy academic research.
Open sessionUsing AI to Summarize and Simplify
Master the art of using AI to extract the essence from complex academic texts — turning dense jargon-filled articles into clear, actionable insights.
Open sessionAI as a Writing Partner — Brainstorming and Outlining
Use ChatGPT as your creative thinking partner to generate ideas, organize your thoughts, and build structured outlines for academic papers and projects.
Open sessionEditing and Improving Your Writing with AI
Turn Claude into your personal writing tutor — submit your own work for feedback on grammar, clarity, tone, and academic style, then apply the suggestions yourself.
Open sessionFact-Checking and Verifying AI Output
Learn why AI can be confidently wrong — understand the phenomenon of 'hallucination' — and build the critical verification habits that protect your academic credibility.
Open sessionUploading Documents — Let AI Read for You
Unlock Gemini's document analysis capabilities to summarize, analyze, and extract insights from PDFs and research articles you upload directly.
Open sessionMicrosoft Copilot — AI in Your Browser
Discover Microsoft Copilot, the AI built directly into your web browser, and learn to use it to summarize, compare, and interact with web content as you browse.
Open sessionChain-of-Thought Prompting — Making AI Think Step by Step
Discover one of the most powerful advanced prompt techniques: asking AI to show its reasoning process — and watch the quality of responses transform dramatically.
Open sessionAI for Literature Reviews — Finding Themes and Gaps
Use Claude to synthesize multiple research sources, identify thematic patterns, spot contradictions, and uncover the research gaps that could define your own scholarly contribution.
Open sessionAI Image Generation — Creating Visuals for Presentations
Use Google Gemini's image generation to create professional visuals for academic presentations — and learn the art of writing precise, descriptive image prompts.
Open sessionBuilding a Research Workflow with AI
Combine Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT into an integrated research workflow — from source discovery to annotated bibliography — that will serve you throughout your academic career.
Open sessionSession 17
Video lesson and practical exercises for adult graduate students learning AI.
Open sessionLong Conversation
Video lesson and practical exercises for adult graduate students learning AI.
Open sessionTemplates
Video lesson and practical exercises for adult graduate students learning AI.
Open sessionNotebookLM
Video lesson and practical exercises for adult graduate students learning AI.
Open sessionThis course is free.
It is here because every adult learner deserves a calm, clear introduction to the modern scholar’s tools. If you would like a guided pass through it, that is what coaching is for.