Competent AI (Intermediate)
Master advanced prompting techniques, build multi-step workflows, and integrate AI into your professional toolkit
What You'll Learn
Go beyond the basics and become truly competent with AI. This intermediate course teaches you professional-grade prompting strategies, multi-step workflows, retrieval techniques, and automation patterns that deliver real productivity gains.
Week 1: Advanced Prompting Tactics
- Prompt engineering principles for consistent, high-quality outputs
- Few-shot learning and in-context examples
- System prompts, temperature, and parameter tuning
- Debugging poor AI responses
- Hands-on lab: Craft production-ready prompts
Week 2: Multi-Step Workflows
- Breaking complex tasks into AI-friendly steps
- Chain-of-thought and tree-of-thought reasoning
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) basics
- Using AI with your documents and data
- Practical applications: research, writing, analysis
Week 3: Automation & Integration
- Connecting AI to spreadsheets, email, and productivity tools
- No-code automation (Zapier, Make, n8n)
- API basics for AI services
- Building reusable templates and workflows
- Mini-project: Automate a recurring work task
Week 4: Collaboration & Mastery
- Team collaboration with AI: etiquette and best practices
- Quality assurance and output validation
- Cost management and efficiency tips
- Capstone: Present your workflow automation
- Roadmap to agentic AI (preview of Advanced course)
Who Should Attend
- Professionals who've completed Introduction to AI or equivalent
- Anyone comfortable with basic AI prompting seeking deeper skills
- Marketing, HR, operations, and knowledge workers
- Managers wanting to implement AI workflows in their teams
- Self-employed professionals seeking productivity leverage
What's Included
- 4 × 1-hour face-to-face sessions in Oxford
- Advanced prompting playbook and workflow templates (PDF)
- Hands-on automation labs
- Personal workflow project feedback from instructor
- Certificate of completion
- Access to private Discord community
- Office hours for technical questions
- Bonus: Prompt library and reusable templates
Prerequisites
This course assumes you have basic AI familiarity. You should:
- Have completed Introduction to AI or equivalent
- Be comfortable writing prompts and using ChatGPT/Claude
- Understand fundamental AI concepts (tokens, context, hallucinations)
- Bring a laptop with internet access to each session
Course Format
Duration: 4 weeks, one evening per week
Time: 18:45 - 20:00 (1 hour instruction + 15min Q&A)
Location: Oxford (venue confirmed upon booking)
Cohort size: 10 students (max 12)
Pricing & Refunds
Standard: £179 per person
Early bird: £159 (book ≥14 days before start)
Buddy discount: 10% off when you book with a colleague
Refund policy: Full refund if cancelled ≥7 days before start; 50% refund 3-6 days before; transfers allowed within 72 hours if a waitlist exists.
Next Steps
Ready to build AI agents and data-driven systems? Continue to Advanced AI (Agentic) to master retrieval chains, agent patterns, and orchestration.
Multi-course savings: 10% off with a 2-course pass, 15% off with the complete 3-course journey.