Prompt Engineering 101 Micro-Credential

Prompt Engineering 101 Micro-Credential

Duration: 2 Hours

Description

The gap between a mediocre AI output and a genuinely useful one is almost never the model — it’s the prompt. This session teaches prompting as a skill with real technique, not trial and error: zero-shot versus few-shot prompting and when each applies, chain-of-thought prompting to get a model to reason through a problem instead of guessing at the answer, and the formatting and iteration habits that turn a so-so first response into something you’d actually use. It closes with responsible-use practices and a preview of how prompting changes once an AI system is acting as an agent rather than just answering a single question.

Audience

This session has no technical prerequisites — it’s for anyone who already uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or a similar tool and knows their results are inconsistent, without knowing exactly why. It’s equally useful for professionals looking to get more reliable output at work and for individuals who just want better results from AI tools generally.

Objectives

  • Understand the core concepts of prompt engineering and why it’s a critical skill
  • Write clear, specific, and effective prompts for a variety of tasks
  • Use proven techniques to improve the quality of AI-generated responses
  • Apply prompting skills to real-world productivity and creative tasks

Prerequisites

No technical or coding experience is required.

Related AI Courses

See the full AI training roadmap and course directory for how this fits into a broader learning path.

For the full multi-day version of this material, see Prompt Engineering. New to generative AI concepts first? Start with Beginner’s Guide to Generative AI Micro-Credential. Ready to go further with agentic and multi-step prompting? See Context Engineering Micro-Credential. Want to apply better prompting directly to daily productivity tools? See Supercharge Your Productivity with Claude Micro-Credential or Supercharge Your Productivity with OpenAI Micro-Credential.

Course Outline

Module 1: The Art and Science of Prompting

  • What is a Prompt?
  • Why Prompt Engineering?
  • Core Principles
  • Lab – Write Different Prompts and Compare Results

Module 2: Essential Prompting Techniques

  • Zero-Shot Prompting
  • Few-Shot Prompting
  • Chain-of-Thought (CoT)
  • Lab – Apply CoT

Module 3: Advanced Topics and Best Practices

  • Prompting for Specific Formats
  • Iterative Prompting
  • Using an AI as Your Co-Pilot
  • Responsible Prompting, and What Comes Next: Prompting Agents