Making Sense of AI: A Hands-On Primer for Turning Curiosity into Capability

What we’ll cover

This three-hour hands-on workshop introduces working professionals and active job seekers to the practical, everyday use of AI tools — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot — for real workplace value. We focus on the three or four patterns that consistently produce useful output, not on theory or prompt-engineering tricks.

By the end of the workshop, learners will be able to: 1. Identify when AI is the right tool for a task vs. when it isn't, and pick the right model / tool for the job at hand. 2. Use AI to draft professional communication (emails, summaries, meeting notes, LinkedIn posts, cover letters) in half the time — with appropriate human review. 3. Use AI as a research + analysis assistant — extracting insights from long documents, comparing options across structured criteria, and stress-testing their own reasoning. 4. Recognize and avoid the common failure modes (hallucination, confident-but-wrong, context bleed, jailbreak leakage) that make AI untrustworthy if used carelessly. 5. Build a personal workflow that moves them past the 'sometimes magical, often useless' phase into consistent productivity gains.

No prior AI experience required. Bring a laptop with internet access and a free ChatGPT or Claude account set up in advance. Each learner should bring one real work task they'd like to try AI on during the lab portion — we'll work through it together and leave you with a pattern you can reuse.

Delivered remote via Microsoft Teams. Recording provided to registered attendees afterward.