A Practical Learning Experience

AI: What Can You Do for Me?

Your Quick Start to Generative AI

7–10 minutes Self-paced 7 short lessons

Generative AI Without the Intimidation

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and other AI assistants can help you think, create, organize, prepare, learn, and work through ideas. You do not need a technical background to begin using them effectively.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

Explain generative AI in simple terms.
Identify practical ways AI assistants can support everyday work.
Build a clearer, more useful prompt.
Improve results by continuing the conversation.
Recognize when AI-generated information should be verified or protected.

Which approach is most likely to help you get a useful AI response?

Ask a vague question and use the first answer. Try to write one perfect prompt before you begin. Give useful context, review the response, and refine it.

1

Meet Your AI Assistant

Generative AI creates new content in response to your instructions. Tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are examples of AI assistants you can interact with conversationally.

Search tools

Help you locate existing information and sources.

Generative AI assistants

Can help you create, summarize, organize, compare, brainstorm, explain, and refine.

The skills transfer. Features vary by tool, version, and workplace configuration, but the basic habits in this course apply across many generative AI assistants.

What sounds most useful to you?

Select each idea you would like to try.

2

What Can AI Do for You?

AI assistants can support many everyday tasks. Select each behavior to learn more.

Write and improve content

Draft emails, outlines, summaries, talking points, first versions, or rewrites in a different tone or format.

Think and brainstorm

Generate options, challenge assumptions, explore possibilities, or help you get unstuck.

Prepare

Prepare for meetings, presentations, interviews, difficult conversations, or decisions.

Learn and explain

Ask for a plain-language explanation, examples, analogies, or a step-by-step breakdown.

Analyze and organize

Compare options, summarize information, identify themes, organize notes, or surface questions to consider.

Which example shows AI being used as more than a writing tool?

“Rewrite this sentence.” “Help me prepare for a meeting by identifying questions I may be asked.” “Fix this typo.”

3

Build a Better Prompt

You have an important meeting tomorrow and want help preparing. A useful prompt gives the AI enough information to understand what you need.

Task

What do you want the AI to do?

Context

What does the AI need to know about the situation?

Details

What format, tone, length, or constraints would make the result more useful?

Remember

You do not need every detail every time. Give the AI enough to understand your goal.

Build your prompt

Select one option in each group. Your choices will be combined below.

1. What do you want help with?

2. Who are you meeting with?

3. What do you need to accomplish?

4. How would you like the response?

4

Which Prompt Wins?

Clearer instructions generally make it easier for an AI assistant to understand what you need.

Which prompt is more likely to produce a useful response?

A. Help me with a meeting. B. Help me prepare talking points for a meeting with my manager tomorrow. I need to discuss a problem and possible solutions. Use concise bullet points and include three questions I should be prepared to answer.

Vague:
“Help me with a meeting.”

More useful:
“Help me prepare talking points for a meeting with my manager tomorrow. I need to discuss a problem and possible solutions. Use concise bullet points.”

A simple starting formula: Task + Context + Details.

5

Keep the Conversation Going

You do not need the perfect prompt the first time. Start with what you know, review the response, and then tell the AI what you want changed.

Select each follow-up prompt to see what it can do.

“Make it shorter.”

Ask the AI to reduce length while preserving the main ideas.

“Explain it more simply.”

Ask for simpler language, a clearer structure, or smaller steps.

“Give me three options.”

Generate alternatives so you can compare approaches instead of relying on one answer.

“Make it warmer.”

Adjust the tone while keeping the core message.

“What am I overlooking?”

Invite the AI to surface assumptions, risks, questions, or considerations you may have missed.

Think conversation, not command.
Ask → Review → Refine → Verify

6

Can You Trust It—and Should You Share It?

AI can produce polished, confident responses that are incomplete, outdated, misleading, or incorrect. It can also create privacy or confidentiality risks if sensitive information is entered into an unapproved tool.

Verify important information

Check legal, medical, financial, HR, safety, statistics, quotations, citations, and other business-critical information using reliable, current sources.

Protect sensitive information

Follow your organization’s policies before entering confidential, proprietary, personal, customer, employee, health, or security-related information.

An AI assistant gives you a specific legal requirement and states it confidently. What should you do?

Use it because it sounds authoritative. Ask the AI to make it sound more professional. Verify it using a reliable, current source.

7

Practice: Put It Together

1. You want AI to help you prepare for a difficult client meeting. Which prompt is stronger?

Help me prepare. Help me prepare for a 30-minute client meeting about a delayed project. Give me five talking points and three questions the client may ask.

2. The first AI response is too long. What is the best next step?

Start over with a different AI tool. Use it as-is. Ask the AI to shorten it and specify what to keep.

3. An AI assistant gives you a statistic you plan to use in an executive presentation. What should you do?

Use it because the AI included a number. Verify the statistic and source before using it. Ask the AI to make the statistic more persuasive.

4. Which statement best describes an effective way to work with generative AI?

Ask, review, refine, and verify. Ask once and trust the response. Write a very long prompt every time.

5. Which statement best summarizes the role of AI?

AI replaces the need for professional judgment. AI is only useful for writing. AI can support your work, but you remain responsible for judgment, accuracy, and appropriate use.

0 / 5 Complete the five questions above.

Course Summary

Generative AI assistants can help you create, think, prepare, learn, analyze, and refine.
Clear prompts make it easier for AI to understand what you need.
A simple starting point is Task + Context + Details.
You do not need a perfect first prompt—continue the conversation.
AI can be wrong, even when it sounds confident.
Verify important facts and sources.
Follow your organization’s policies before entering sensitive or confidential information.
Keep human judgment in the loop.

Choose one action to practice

Generative AI does not replace your expertise. It gives you another way to use your expertise—while your judgment, context, experience, and accountability remain essential.

Thank you for taking the time to build your confidence with generative AI.

Start small, stay curious, and remember: Ask, Review, Refine, and Verify.