A New Course Teaches You How to Tap the Powers of ChatGPT and Put It to Work for You

Released in Novem­ber 2022, Chat­G­PT gave us all a glimpse into the future world of AI–a sense of what the world will look like when chat­bots can think and exe­cute tasks on our behalf. There’s a good chance that you’ve already exper­i­ment­ed loose­ly with Chat­G­PT, try­ing to test its strengths and weak­ness­es. But have you con­sid­ered using Chat­G­PT to unlock your cre­ativ­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in more sub­stan­tive ways? If so, Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty has a new course for you: Prompt Engi­neer­ing for Chat­G­PT.

Cre­at­ed by Dr. Jules White, Prompt Engi­neer­ing for Chat­G­PT will teach stu­dents how to write effec­tive “prompts” (or well-craft­ed ques­tions) so that they can lever­age Chat­G­PT and oth­er large lan­guage mod­els. Large lan­guage mod­els (LLMs) respond to “prompts” posed by users in nat­ur­al lan­guage state­ments. If users can write good prompts, they can get effec­tive answers from large lan­guage mod­els and dis­cov­er cre­ative uses for these tools. Divid­ed into six mod­ules, the Van­der­bilt course cov­ers the art of writ­ing effec­tive prompts, start­ing with basic prompts and build­ing toward more sophis­ti­cat­ed ones. By course’s end, stu­dents should feel com­fort­able using Chat­G­PT to com­plete mean­ing­ful tasks in their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives. For exam­ple, one stu­dent left this tes­ti­mo­ni­al after com­plet­ing the course:

As a med­ical researcher and med­ical writer with >30 years of expe­ri­ence, I was real­ly stunned to see what the capa­bil­i­ties of LLMs are. Dr. White made a great work of explain­ing and giv­ing exam­ples. About halfway through the course I was able to put Chat­G­PT to work on a real work-relat­ed issue. With its help, I was able in fact to com­plete in 7 hours a job that would have required at least 20. Now, after com­plet­ing the course, I believe that — by apply­ing some more com­plex for­mat­ting — I could have shaved anoth­er cou­ple of hours…”

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, Prompt Engi­neer­ing for Chat­G­PT is designed for begin­ners. You only need a brows­er and a Chat­G­PT account. Designed to be com­plet­ed in 18 hours, stu­dents can take the course for a fee ($49) and earn a cre­den­tial at the end. Or they can also audit the course–and forego the credential–for no fee. Enroll here.

Nota Bene: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. We often fea­ture their cours­es because the cours­es offer val­ue to our read­ers. We typ­i­cal­ly receive fees when users sign up for a paid course, and some­times we receive a fee for fea­tur­ing an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram itself. Those fees help sup­port our oper­a­tion.

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