Free 20-Session Course
AI Essentials for Graduate Students
Learn to communicate effectively with artificial intelligence through hands-on practice. No experience required — just curiosity and a willingness to try something new.
Course Overview
What You Will Learn
This course teaches you one essential skill: how to communicate with AI effectively. Just as learning to write a good email or a clear research question takes practice, learning to write good AI prompts is a skill that improves with repetition.
Over 20 sessions, you will progress from typing your very first AI question to building complete academic workflows powered by multiple AI platforms. Every session uses free tools — no credit card required, no subscriptions to manage.
Start Session 1By the End of This Course, You Will:
- ✓ Confidently use 6 different AI platforms
- ✓ Write structured, effective AI prompts
- ✓ Use AI for research, writing, and editing
- ✓ Fact-check AI output and avoid errors
- ✓ Upload and analyze documents with AI
- ✓ Generate images for academic presentations
- ✓ Build your own personal AI toolkit
Your AI Toolkit
Six Free Platforms, One Powerful Skillset
You will practice with a variety of leading AI platforms — all available at no cost. Each has different strengths, and by the end of this course, you will know exactly when to use each one.
Foundations — Sessions 1–5
Learn what AI is, how to talk to it, and write your first effective prompts.
Welcome to AI: Your First Conversation
What is AI? What is a prompt? Access ChatGPT and have your very first conversation with artificial intelligence.
Start Session →The Anatomy of a Good Prompt
Learn the three parts of an effective prompt: context, task, and format. Transform vague questions into powerful instructions.
Start Session →Exploring Google Gemini
Navigate a new AI platform and discover how different AIs have different strengths. Compare Gemini’s answers to ChatGPT’s.
Start Session →Meet Claude: AI for Thoughtful Writing
Explore a third AI platform known for careful reasoning and nuanced responses. Learn to specify your audience in prompts.
Start Session →The Power of Persona Prompts
Discover how assigning a role to AI dramatically improves its responses. Practice persona prompts for academic work.
Start Session →Building Skills — Sessions 6–10
Use AI for research, writing, editing, and academic tasks with growing confidence.
AI-Powered Research with Perplexity
Discover an AI that searches the web and cites its sources. Learn to use Perplexity for citation-backed academic research.
Start Session →Summarize and Simplify with AI
Ask AI to summarize articles, simplify complex language, and extract key points at different levels of detail.
Start Session →AI as a Writing Partner
Use AI for brainstorming and outlining. Understand the critical difference between AI writing for you versus writing with you.
Start Session →Editing and Improving Your Writing
Have AI review your own writing for grammar, clarity, tone, and structure. Learn to apply AI feedback constructively.
Start Session →Fact-Checking AI Output
Learn about AI hallucinations and why you must always verify. Practice cross-referencing AI responses for accuracy.
Start Session →Intermediate Techniques — Sessions 11–15
Master advanced prompt strategies and expand your AI capabilities for academic productivity.
Uploading Documents to AI
Upload PDFs and documents for AI analysis. Ask AI to summarize, extract arguments, and identify weaknesses in uploaded content.
Start Session →Microsoft Copilot: AI in Your Browser
Use AI integrated into your web browser. Summarize web pages and compare arguments across multiple articles.
Start Session →Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Learn the advanced technique of asking AI to think step by step. See the dramatic difference in response quality.
Start Session →AI for Literature Reviews
Use AI to identify themes across sources, find research gaps, and organize your literature review ethically.
Start Session →AI Image Generation
Create visuals for academic presentations using AI. Learn to describe images effectively and use them ethically.
Start Session →Mastery and Application — Sessions 16–20
Combine all your skills into real academic workflows and build your personal AI strategy.
Building a Research Workflow
Create a complete research workflow combining multiple AI tools. Chain outputs across platforms for maximum efficiency.
Start Session →AI for Dissertation Planning
Use AI for topic narrowing, methodology selection, timeline creation, and dissertation committee communication drafts.
Start Session →Mastering Long Conversations
Build context over extended AI conversations. Practice iterative refinement across multiple prompts to create complete documents.
Start Session →Custom Instructions and Templates
Create reusable prompt templates for recurring academic tasks. Build your personal AI toolkit for graduate school.
Start Session →Your AI Toolkit — Capstone
Upload your own sources to NotebookLM, generate study guides and audio overviews, and write your personal AI strategy.
Start Session →The best time to learn something new was twenty years ago. The second best time is right now. — Dr. Pesach Walter
Ready to Begin?
Start Your AI Journey Today
Session 1 takes about 30 minutes and requires nothing more than a computer and an internet connection. No credit card, no downloads, no technical knowledge.