Gen­er­a­tive AI is rapid­ly becom­ing an essen­tial tool for stream­lin­ing work and solv­ing com­plex chal­lenges. How­ev­er, know­ing how to use GenAI effec­tive­ly isn’t always obvi­ous. That’s where Google Prompt­ing Essen­tials comes in. This course will teach you to write clear and spe­cif­ic instructions—known as prompts—for AI. Once you can prompt well, you can unlock gen­er­a­tive AI’s poten­tial more ful­ly.

Launched in April, Google Prompt­ing Essen­tials has become the most pop­u­lar GenAI course offered on Cours­era. The course itself is divid­ed into four mod­ules. First, “Start Writ­ing Prompts Like a Pro” will teach you a 5‑step method for craft­ing effec­tive prompts. (Watch the video from Mod­ule 1 above, and more videos here.) With the sec­ond mod­ule, “Design Prompts for Every­day Work Tasks,” you will learn how to use AI to draft emails, brain­storm ideas, and sum­ma­rize doc­u­ments. The third mod­ule, “Speed Up Data Analy­sis and Pre­sen­ta­tion Build­ing,” teach­es tech­niques for uncov­er­ing insights in data, visu­al­iz­ing results, and prepar­ing pre­sen­ta­tions. The final mod­ule, “Use AI as a Cre­ative or Expert Part­ner,” explores advanced tech­niques such as prompt chain­ing and mul­ti­modal prompt­ing. Plus, you will “cre­ate a per­son­al­ized AI agent to role-play con­ver­sa­tions and pro­vide expert feed­back.”

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, Google Prompt­ing Essen­tials costs $49. Once you com­plete the course, you will receive a cer­tifi­cate from Google to share with your net­work and employ­er. Bet­ter yet, you will under­stand how to make GenAI a more use­ful tool in your life and work. Enroll here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

This week, Google announced the launch of Google AI Essen­tials, a new self-paced course designed to help peo­ple learn AI skills that can boost their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Taught by Google’s AI experts, and assum­ing no pri­or knowl­edge of pro­gram­ming, the course ven­tures to show stu­dents how to “use AI in the real world,” with an empha­sis on help­ing stu­dents:

• Devel­op ideas and con­tent. If you’re stuck at the begin­ning of a project, use AI tools to help you brain­storm new ideas. In the course, you’ll use a con­ver­sa­tion­al AI tool to gen­er­ate con­cepts for a prod­uct and devel­op a pre­sen­ta­tion to pitch the prod­uct.
• Make more informed deci­sions. Let’s say you’re plan­ning an event. AI tools can help you research the best loca­tion to host it based on your cri­te­ria. You can also use AI to help you come up with a tagline or slo­gan.
• Speed up dai­ly work tasks. Clear out that inbox faster using AI to help you sum­ma­rize emails and draft respons­es.

Google AI Essen­tials fea­tures five mod­ules (the video above comes from Mod­ule 1) and takes about 9 hours to com­plete. The tuition is cur­rent­ly set at $49, and those who com­plete the course will earn a Google cer­tifi­cate that they can share with their pro­fes­sion­al net­work.

Google AI Essen­tials fol­lows up on anoth­er course recent­ly-fea­tured here on OC, Gen­er­a­tive AI for Edu­ca­tors. Find it here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google & Cours­era Launch New Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 2–6 Months: Busi­ness Intel­li­gence & Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics

Google & MIT Offer a Free Course on Gen­er­a­tive AI for Teach­ers and Edu­ca­tors

Google & Cours­era Cre­ate a Career Cer­tifi­cate That Pre­pares Stu­dents for Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Jobs in 6 Months