AIML20 - Practical A.I. Prompt Engineering
Program Description
Learn the foundations of effective AI prompting and response evaluation. Use hands-on exercises to build a personal AI toolkit tailored to your professional workflow.
Rather than providing a list of one-off prompts to use, this online self-paced course teaches you how prompt engineering actually works. Through hands-on exercises, you’ll build a personal A.I. toolkit with prompts tailored to your specific role, tasks, and personal workflow.
Learning Objectives:
After completing the program, you will be able to:
- Construct effective AI prompts by applying principles of context, specificity, and iteration rather than relying on memorized templates
- Evaluate AI-generated output for accuracy, completeness, and domain-specific correctness using a structured assessment approach
- Refine AI output through structured iteration, recognizing when to steer and when to change approach
- Build reusable prompt templates tailored to recurring tasks in their own professional workflow
- Identify when AI is and isn’t the appropriate tool for a given task, recognizing the boundaries of reliable AI assistance
Who Should Attend:
- Working professionals across industries who use or want to use AI tools (ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Gemini, etc.) in their daily work. No technical background required.
- Ideal for knowledge workers, managers, analysts, educators, healthcare professionals, engineers, and anyone whose work involves writing, analysis, communication, or decision-making.

James Lembke, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Milwaukee School of Engineering. He spent two decades in industry (including OS kernel development and high-availability systems at IBM) before moving into teaching. His courses cover networking, operating systems, systems programming, and web development. His current work focuses on teaching professionals and students to work effectively with AI: how to direct it, how to evaluate what it gives you, and how to fit it into your workflow without shortcutting the thinking that makes the work yours.