Updated July 2026

AI Fundamentals for All Staff

Class Duration

14 hours of live training delivered over 2-4 days to accommodate your scheduling needs.

Student Prerequisites

Comfort with everyday office software: documents, spreadsheets, email, and a web browser
No technical background or programming experience required

Target Audience

Every role in the organization: operations, HR, finance, marketing, sales, legal, support, and management. No technical background is assumed, and nothing in the course requires one. Equally valuable for teams rolling out AI assistants organization-wide and for leaders who want their whole staff to share a common baseline of AI literacy and judgment, so that everyone uses, questions, and checks AI the same way.

Description

This practical, jargon-free course introduces working effectively with AI to every role in the organization: no programming required. Participants learn what modern AI systems can and cannot do, how to write prompts that get useful results, and how to fold AI assistants into everyday work: drafting and editing documents, summarizing and researching, analyzing spreadsheets, and automating repetitive tasks. That includes the newest generation of tools, AI agents that carry out entire multi-step tasks (research, document drafting, file handling) on a person's behalf. The course is deliberately tool-agnostic: participants practice with whichever assistant their organization provides, whether ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, and everything taught transfers between them. Judgment receives as much attention as mechanics: verifying AI output, recognizing hallucinations, protecting sensitive data, and knowing when a human needs to stay in the loop. Every topic is practiced against ordinary workplace situations, and participants leave with working habits they can apply the same day.

Learning Outcomes

Explain in plain language how modern AI assistants work, what they do well, and where they fail.
Write clear, well-structured prompts and refine results through follow-up conversation.
Draft, edit, and adapt workplace documents with AI: emails, reports, proposals, and meeting notes.
Summarize long documents and conduct research with AI, checking summaries against their sources.
Analyze spreadsheets and everyday business data by asking questions in plain language.
Delegate multi-step tasks such as research, document drafting, and file handling to AI agents, and review the results before relying on them.
Verify AI output systematically, recognize hallucinations, and match the depth of checking to the stakes of the task.
Protect sensitive and confidential information when working with AI tools, and apply your organization's usage policies.
Decide when a task can be handed to AI and when a human needs to stay in the loop.
Build daily working habits and shared team practices that make AI use consistent and dependable.

Training Materials

Comprehensive courseware is distributed online at the start of class. All students receive a downloadable MP4 recording of the training.

Software Requirements

Students need access to a modern AI assistant (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini) through their organization or a free account, and a web browser. No installation required.

Training Topics

How Modern AI Assistants Work

What AI assistants are and how they generate responses, in plain language
Today's mainstream tools: ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini
What AI does well: language, summarization, structure, and ideas
Where AI falls short: facts, arithmetic, recent events, and judgment
Why assistants sound confident even when they are wrong

Writing Effective Prompts

The anatomy of a good prompt: goal, context, format, and constraints
Providing background information and examples
Specifying tone, audience, and length
Refining results through follow-up instead of starting over
Common prompt mistakes and how to fix them

Working with Documents

Drafting emails, reports, proposals, and meeting notes
Editing for clarity, tone, and audience
Turning rough notes into polished prose
Adapting one piece of writing for different readers
Using AI as a second reader for review and proofreading

Research and Summarization

Summarizing long documents, reports, and email threads
Asking questions about an uploaded file
Combining and comparing information from multiple sources
Using assistants that search the web for current information
Knowing when to check a summary against the original

Working with Data and Spreadsheets

Uploading a spreadsheet and asking questions in plain language
Finding patterns, totals, and outliers
Getting help with formulas and data cleanup
Turning numbers into charts and clear explanations
Sanity-checking AI-generated figures before sharing them

AI Agents That Do Multi-Step Work

How agents differ from a simple chat conversation
Handing off research, drafting, and file handling tasks
Writing instructions clear enough to act on without you
Reviewing an agent's results before acting on them
Choosing which tasks are ready to delegate and which are not

Verification, Accuracy, and Hallucinations

Why AI systems make things up and how to spot it
Checking names, numbers, dates, quotes, and citations
Asking the assistant for its sources
Matching the depth of checking to the stakes of the task
Habits that catch errors before they spread

Privacy, Confidentiality, and Responsible Use

What happens to the information you share with an AI tool
Protecting customer, employee, and company data
Working within your organization's AI policy
Attribution, disclosure, and fairness basics
When a human must stay in the loop

Building Daily Habits and Team Practices

Spotting AI opportunities in your own workday
Automating repetitive tasks one step at a time
Keeping a personal library of prompts that work
Sharing effective practices with your team
Staying current as AI tools change