Introduction to ChatGPT for Beginners

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Overview

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Make ChatGPT more useful, reliable, and easier to review in everyday work. You’ll learn to configure it for your context, write usable prompts, work with documents and visuals, and build repeatable workflows for research, content, planning, and email. Throughout the course, you’ll explore: ChatGPT Setup: Choose models and reasoning effort, adjust response settings, and apply privacy and data controls. Prompting: Use role, context, task, and format to create reusable prompts, fix weak outputs, and improve answers with follow-ups. Documents and Visuals: Turn long files into source-checked briefs, analyze images, and create charts and infographics while considering rights and disclosure. Projects and GPTs: Organize instructions, files, memory, apps, and recurring tasks, then build and test a custom GPT for one job. Research and Work: Request sources and quotations, fact-check claims, plan realistic activities, create authentic content, and draft reusable emails. By the end of the course, you’ll use ChatGPT with stronger judgment, producing practical outputs while checking accuracy, privacy, suitability, and human accountability.

Syllabus

How to Set Up ChatGPT So It Answers in Your Context
- This module introduces how ChatGPT produces an answer and shows you how to configure an account so that responses suit the work you actually do. You will explore the main areas of the interface, how to choose between models and levels of reasoning effort for different kinds of task, and how account instructions shape every new conversation. The module also covers the settings that determine what is stored and what is used, together with practical guidance on what should not be entered into a conversation at all. These skills give you a working setup and a basis for judging how much weight to place on any particular answer.
How to Write a Prompt That Gets a Usable Answer on the First Try
- This module covers the structure of an effective prompt and the small adjustments that turn a disappointing answer into a usable one. You will explore the four elements that most working prompts contain, a set of reusable patterns for everyday tasks such as extracting, summarising, comparing and critiquing, and the most frequent reasons a request produces the wrong result. The module also looks at how to improve an answer through targeted follow-ups rather than discarding work that was already close. These skills help you get nearer to what you need on a first attempt, and recover quickly when you do not.
How to Turn a Long Document into a One-Page Brief
- This module covers working with documents, images and long stretches of text, and producing a summary you can check rather than one you have to trust. You will explore how files are read, what happens when a document is longer than the space available in a conversation, and which formats give dependable results. The module also covers pulling information out of screenshots and images, and drawing figures and themes from unstructured text. These skills help you work through long material quickly while keeping each claim traceable back to its source.
How to Create Images, Charts, and Infographics Inside ChatGPT
- This module covers producing visual material — images, charts and infographics — and deciding whether what you have produced can actually be used. You will explore how an image description is interpreted, how to steer a result towards what you intended, and how to turn your own figures into a chart. The module also covers the rights, labelling and accessibility questions that apply to generated visuals, including the situations where a generated image is the wrong choice altogether. These skills support making simple visuals for everyday work and checking them before anything is published.
How to Set Up a Reusable Workspace with Projects, Memory, and Tasks
- This module covers organising ongoing work so that context does not have to be re-established at the start of every conversation. You will explore projects that hold their own instructions and reference files, the differences between account settings, project instructions, stored memory and attached documents, and how to review what has been kept about you. The module also covers connecting external apps, scheduling work that recurs, and sharing a conversation with somebody else. These skills help you build a workspace that stays usable over months rather than days.
How to Build and Publish a Custom GPT That Does One Job Well
- This module covers custom assistants: what they are, how a set of written instructions produces consistent behaviour, and how to get dependable results from one. You will explore the difference between configuring an assistant and training a model, what belongs in its instructions as opposed to its attached files, and how to test one before relying on it. The module also covers when a configured assistant is worth having and when a saved prompt will do just as well. These skills help you use existing assistants with confidence and set up your own wherever your plan allows it.
How to Research a Topic and Verify It Before You Use It
- This module covers using ChatGPT for research and checking what comes back before it informs a decision. You will explore how to write a request that returns sources, dates and supporting quotations, why a confident answer can still be inaccurate, and the kinds of claim where errors tend to gather. The module also covers a short routine for verifying a claim against its source, and what to do with one that does not stand up. These skills help you use research output for work that other people will see.
How to Use ChatGPT for Everyday Tasks
- This module covers using ChatGPT for personal planning and decisions rather than for professional deliverables. You will explore planning a day or a week around commitments that already exist, what a planning assistant cannot know about your circumstances, and how stating your constraints changes what comes back. The module also covers support for weighing up a decision and for establishing a habit you want to keep. These skills help you produce a plan that reflects your own situation rather than an average one.
How to Plan, Write, and Publish a Week of Content
- This module covers producing written content that sounds like you rather than like anyone else working in your field. You will explore describing an audience precisely, planning a series of posts around it, and building a description of your own voice from writing you have already done. The module also covers the habits that make a draft recognisably machine-written, how to edit them out, and how to adapt one piece for a different platform. These skills support producing content more quickly without losing what makes it yours.
How to Clear Your Inbox Faster with a Reusable Email Kit
- This module covers drafting email with ChatGPT, and the decisions worth making before any drafting begins. You will explore stating the outcome you want and the constraints you are working within, a set of templates for situations that come round repeatedly, and how the structure changes for difficult messages such as declining a request or passing on bad news. The module also covers adapting register for different readers and the checks worth running before anything is sent. These skills help you deal with routine correspondence more quickly while keeping control of what you commit to.