Applied AI

Vanderbilt University via Coursera Specialization

Overview

Master the practical techniques, strategies, and tools used to apply artificial intelligence across work, business, and everyday problem solving. Through hands-on projects, you'll learn prompt engineering, AI agents, AI-assisted reasoning, application development, intelligent automation, and advanced workflows that work across today's leading AI models and platforms. No coding is required.

Syllabus

Course 1: Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
Course 2: Build Anything with AI — No Code Required
Course 3: Build Apps with AI — From Idea to Working Product
Course 4: ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis
Course 5: Trustworthy Generative AI
Course 6: Agentic AI and AI Agents: A Primer for Leaders

Courses

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ChatGPT and other large language models are going to be more important in your life and business than your smartphone, if you use them right. ChatGPT can tutor your child in math, generate a meal plan and recipes, write software applications for your business, help you improve your personal cybersecurity, and that is just in the first hour that you use it. This course will teach you how to be an expert user of these generative AI tools. The course will show amazing examples of how you can tap into these generative AI tools' emergent intelligence and reasoning, how you can use them to be more productive day to day, and give you insight into how they work. Large language models respond to instructions and questions posed by users in natural language statements, known as “prompts”. Although large language models will disrupt many fields, most users lack the skills to write effective prompts. Expert users, who understand how to write good prompts, are orders of magnitude more productive and can unlock significantly more creative uses for these tools. This course introduces students to the patterns and approaches for writing effective prompts for large language models. Anyone can take the course and the only required knowledge is basic computer usage skills, such as using a browser and accessing ChatGPT. Students will start with basic prompts and build towards writing sophisticated prompts to solve problems in any domain. By the end of the course, students will have strong prompt engineering skills and be capable of using large language models for a wide range of tasks in their job, business, personal life, and education, such as writing, summarization, game play, planning, simulation, and programming.
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ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis is going to transform tasks by helping amplify your productivity and supporting your creativity. ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis can help you augment your intelligence and automate tasks, such as: 1. Turning an Excel file into visualizations and then slides inside a PowerPoint presentation; extracting data from a series of PDFs 2. Answering questions about what is in the PDFs, and visualizing the data; automatically determining if a receipt complies with a travel policy captured in a PDF 3. Transforming a document into a training presentation and associated quizzes; reading and reorganizing a set of documents based on what they contain 4. Producing social media and marketing content from a series of documents or video transcripts 5. Automating resizing and editing of videos/images while also cataloging them in a CSV Anyone with ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis can tap into these capabilities without any prior experience in programming. The course teaches you how to converse with ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis to accomplish these tasks, how to think about problem solving, and what types of tasks are good fits for the tool. You will learn a wide range of building blocks that you can apply in your own work and life. Large language models respond to instructions and questions posed by users in natural language statements, known as “prompts”. Although large language models will disrupt many fields, most users lack the skills to write effective prompts. Expert users, who understand how to write good prompts, are orders of magnitude more productive and can unlock significantly more creative uses for these tools. This course will introduce you to prompt writing skills that target ChatGPT Advanced Data Analysis.
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We see lots of news reports of Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, making mistakes and producing inaccurate information. Many of these mistakes happen because humans use the tools in the wrong way - trying to solve unsuitable problems and not thinking about risk. Hallucination isn't a bug, it's a feature when you approach problems correctly. This course teaches techniques for determining if a problem fits Generative AI's capabilities, framing problems to reduce risk, prompt engineering for trust, and appropriate human engagement in the process. Students learn concrete prompt designs, how to check outputs, how to use Generative AI for ideation and creation, ways to augment human skills, and more ethical, beneficial applications. The course will show how you can: - Leverage prompt engineering techniques to generate more reliable outputs - Master methods to verify and validate outputs - Frame problems in alternative ways to reduce risk - Apply generative AI for creative ideation - Use Generative AI in ways that augment rather than replace human reasoning and creativity
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Forget everything you know about traditional AI. Agentic AI doesn’t just analyze data; it acts on it. From drafting sales emails to updating CRMs, it’s not just a tool—it’s a game-changer. Are you ready to harness its power? Agentic AI combines Generative AI with tools and actions, enabling the creation of "agents" that revolutionize how work is done. Unlike tools that simply generate static outputs, these agents take action—drafting emails directly in your inbox, updating a CRM with client meeting notes, or analyzing sales data and producing a PowerPoint presentation. In the fast-paced world of AI-enhanced work, understanding Agentic AI isn’t optional—it’s your competitive advantage. These intelligent agents are reshaping how tasks are executed, decisions are made, and value is created across industries. By automating repetitive workflows and enhancing high-value tasks, they empower teams to focus on innovation and strategy. Agentic AI is transforming industries, and this course will ensure you’re leading the charge, not playing catch-up. Understanding their capabilities and limitations is essential for staying competitive in this rapidly evolving landscape. This course demystifies Agentic AI, teaching you how these agents work and how to design them to suit your needs. By the end, you’ll not only know how to differentiate genuine AI innovation from overhyped gimmicks but also be equipped to build tools that deliver tangible value. Whether you’re in business, technology, or leadership, this course will help you stay ahead of the curve.
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What if you had a computer science PhD sitting next to you — one who could instantly turn your ideas into working software, sharp analysis, and beautiful visuals? You do. Modern AI tools like Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, OpenAI Codex, and MAJK can act as your personal expert in computing, realizing your thoughts and goals on your computer without you writing a single line of code. Here's the truth: the personal computer was never very personal. For fifty years, "using a computer" meant bending yourself around commodity software that never quite fit the way you work. That era is over. This is personalized computing — where the computing works the way you want, because you describe what you want and AI makes it real. This course teaches you the patterns for building with AI: the fundamental mental models and ways of interacting with AI that let you build anything you want without knowing how to code. You'll learn the architecture of how to communicate with AI to produce high-quality work — how to describe what you want, how to check the AI's work so you can trust it, and how to think through problems in computing the way a builder does, even if you're not a computer scientist. Most AI courses teach you tricks for specific tools. This one teaches you the building blocks that underlie all of them — the patterns behind every AI tool, today's and tomorrow's. Once you know these patterns, you can compose them: combining simple building blocks into solutions you never thought possible without a team of software engineers and data scientists working for you. And you'll prove it by building bold, genuinely cool things — custom to you, from your real digital life: - Unleash your AI on a chaotic folder of files and watch it reorganize everything into clean, logical order - Transform messy data into a stunning interactive dashboard your colleagues will ask you how you made - Turn your photos into a living, interactive experience that sees them through AI's eyes - Feed in a folder of credit card statements and get a forensic deep-dive on your spending — surfacing forgotten subscriptions and hidden savings - Build your own personal situation room: a command center that takes in your files, meeting reports, notes, and to-dos, discovers hidden insights, and draws your attention to what matters most By the end, you'll know what's possible, how to ask for it, and how to verify you got it. Computing that fits you, built by you. If you can describe it, you can build it.
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Build Apps with AI — From Idea to Working Product Have you ever had an idea for an app — something that would make your life easier, your business sharper, or your work faster — but no way to make it real? Maybe you needed a tool that doesn't exist. Maybe you saw exactly how software could transform your team, but didn't have the developers to build it. Maybe you've been carrying that idea around for years, waiting for the right moment or the right person. That moment is now. That person is you. AI agent tools like Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, ChatGPT Work, Claude Cowork, and MAJK have fundamentally changed who gets to build software. You describe what you want. The AI writes the code, runs the tests, fixes the bugs, and iterates until what you imagined is actually running on your machine. No engineering team. No coding experience. No waiting. What's shifted is the role of the human. You don't need to know how to code — you need to think like a product owner. How to break an idea into buildable steps. How to describe what you want so the AI doesn't guess. How to test what it produces so you can trust it. How to push it further without losing what's already working. That's exactly what this course teaches. Not tricks for a specific tool — the mental models and patterns that work across Claude Code, Codex, MAJK, and every agent that comes after them. If you can describe what you want, you can build it. You'll prove it by shipping real things — apps that solve problems you actually have: Build a personal expense analyzer — drop in your bank statements and get a custom web app that surfaces your real spending patterns, flags unusual charges, and tracks what matters to you Ship your own file intelligence tool — an app that ingests a folder of documents, understands what's in them, and lets you search, summarize, and query your own files like a private research assistant Create a custom dashboard from scratch — connect your own data sources and build a live dashboard that shows exactly the metrics you care about, designed exactly the way you want Launch a working web app in a single session — go from blank slate to deployed product: a real URL, real functionality, built by you with an AI agent doing the heavy lifting Build your own automation tool — describe a workflow you do manually every week and turn it into software that runs it for you By the end, you won't just know what AI can build — you'll have built it yourself. You'll have the instincts of a product builder, the vocabulary to direct AI agents confidently, and a portfolio of working software that proves what's now possible. The gap between "I have an idea" and "I have a product" just collapsed. This course is how you walk through it. After this course, the most difficult decision will be what NOT to build. When anything is possible, knowing what ideas to pursue is what is hard.