AI Foundations - Pro User
Go from curious to confident: master practical AI tools and workflows in 8 weekend sessions.
AI Foundations - Pro User is a practical, hands-on course designed to take you from AI curiosity to genuine day-to-day fluency. Over eight weekend sessions, you'll learn how modern AI tools actually work, how to write prompts that get reliable results, and how to apply AI across writing, research, images, data, and automation. Each session pairs a short concept walkthrough with guided practice, so you leave every class with something you built yourself — from a custom chatbot persona to a small AI-assisted tool like a calculator or a personal automation. By the end, you'll know not just which buttons to press, but how to think about AI: its strengths, its limits, and how to use it responsibly. This is a hybrid course: join us in person at the Queens Library or attend live over Zoom. No coding background is required — just curiosity and a laptop. You'll finish able to use AI tools like a power user, build simple AI-assisted projects, and design your own AI workflows for work, study, or life.
Is this course right for you?
Great fit if you…
- You use a computer comfortably and want to use AI tools like a power user.
- You're curious about ChatGPT and AI but want structured, hands-on guidance.
- You want practical skills you can apply to work, study, or everyday tasks.
- You can attend live weekend sessions in person or over Zoom.
- You want to build small AI-assisted projects without heavy coding.
Maybe not yet if you…
- You're looking for a deep machine-learning or model-training engineering course.
- You can't make time for weekly live weekend sessions or practice between them.
- You expect a fully passive video course with no hands-on assignments.
- You need advanced programming or data-science prerequisites covered first.
What you'll walk away with
- Write reliable, structured prompts that get consistent results from AI tools.
- Build a custom AI chatbot persona for a real task or workflow.
- Generate and refine images, text, and content with generative AI tools.
- Create a simple AI-assisted tool such as a working calculator.
- Design and run a personal AI automation that saves you time each week.
What students say
4.9 / 5 average instructor rating
The lesson plan
8 weeks · liveAI Foundations & Your First Power Workflow
We demystify modern AI: what large language models are, what they can and can't do, and how to interact with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. You'll set up your accounts, learn the anatomy of a good interaction, and run your first guided sessions.
Prompt Engineering Fundamentals
Prompting is a skill. This session covers the building blocks of effective prompts: role, context, task, format, and constraints. You'll learn frameworks for getting consistent, high-quality output and practice iterating to improve results.
Building a Custom AI Chatbot Persona
Learn to create custom assistants using system prompts and custom GPT-style configurations. You'll define a persona, give it instructions and knowledge, and test it on real scenarios so it behaves consistently for a chosen use case.
Generative Images & Visual Content
Explore AI image generation tools and the art of visual prompting. You'll learn to describe scenes, control style and composition, iterate on results, and understand ethical and copyright considerations for AI-generated images.
AI for Writing, Research & Documents
Use AI as a research and writing partner. You'll learn to summarize long documents, extract key points, draft and edit content, and verify facts to avoid hallucinations. We'll cover working with uploaded files and long-form material responsibly.
Build a Simple AI-Assisted Tool (Calculator)
Put it all together by building a small working tool — a calculator — using AI to generate, explain, and debug the code. No prior coding required: you'll learn to describe what you want, run the result in a browser, and fix issues with AI's help.
AI Automation & Personal Workflows
Learn to chain AI into repeatable workflows using no-code tools and built-in automation features. You'll design an automation that handles a recurring task — like sorting emails, generating summaries, or drafting responses — and connect AI to real triggers.
Responsible AI & Capstone Showcase
We close with the responsible-use essentials — privacy, bias, accuracy, and disclosure — and a showcase where you present one project from the course. You'll leave with a personal AI toolkit and a plan for continuing to grow as a pro user.
Your instructor
Saiful has spent the last decade turning complex technology into something people can actually use — and the last three years teaching AI to over 1,200 students across live cohorts.
Full bioFrequently asked questions
No. This course is beginner-friendly. If you can use a computer and a web browser, you can succeed. Even the project weeks use AI to help generate and explain any code.
It's hybrid. You can attend live in person at the Queens Library or join the same live session over Zoom. Use whichever works for you each week.
Every Saturday from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM Eastern, from July 11 through August 29, 2026 — eight sessions total.
A laptop with a modern web browser and accounts on at least one AI tool (free tiers are fine). We'll guide setup in Week 1.
Live sessions are designed for participation. Check with the instructor about recording availability for sessions you may miss.