Where do beginners start?

AI Essentials for Work, then Microsoft 365 Copilot or Prompt Engineering.

Not for AI Essentials or the Copilot courses. The n8n and LangChain courses are more technical and assume some comfort with code.

Which tools are covered?

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, n8n and LangChain.

Is it free, and is there a certificate?

Every lesson, note and assessment is free. The EDWartens certificate is optional and paid, and you can finish without it.

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Free generative AI and ChatGPT courses with certificate

Free generative AI courses, from everyday ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft 365 Copilot skills to prompt engineering, AI agents with n8n, and chatbots that answer from your own documents with LangChain.

Browse all free courses

7 courses · 76 modules · 61h 29m of video · Updated 27 September 2026

FreeAI for professionalsBeginner

AI Essentials for Work: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot

Use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot properly at work: what they are, how to ask, how to check what comes back, and what never to paste in. Taught from Google's AI Essentials, Anthropic's AI Fluency course and OpenAI Academy.

Decide which tasks to hand to an AI assistant and which to keep
Write prompts with a task, context, references and format
Use examples to get the exact style and structure you want

9 modules 3h 18mView course

FreeAI for professionalsBeginner

Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio Agents

Use Microsoft 365 Copilot well and build your first agent: what Copilot, Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio each are, how grounding works, Copilot in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, prompting and saved prompts, the Researcher and Analyst agents, building and grounding an agent in Copilot Studio, and responsible use.

Tell apart Copilot Chat, Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents and Copilot Studio
Explain grounding and why permissions shape every Copilot answer
Use Copilot in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, and check its output

9 modules 4h 27mView course

FreeAI for professionalsBeginner

Excel with Copilot and AI for Finance and FP&A

Put AI to work in Excel for finance: Copilot in Excel and its agent mode, what the retired =COPILOT function taught, cleaning data with Power Query, Python in Excel, testing Copilot against Claude and ChatGPT on the same spreadsheet, and building forecasts, dashboards and board commentary without losing control of the numbers.

Use Copilot in Excel on a clean table and check every formula it writes
Classify and summarise text with Copilot, and know why Microsoft kept AI away from calculations
Clean messy exports with Power Query so next month is one refresh

9 modules 4h 50mView course

FreeAI and machine learningBeginner

Generative AI and LLM Foundations

What a language model is actually doing when it answers, why it is confidently wrong sometimes, how to call one from Python on a free route, how to run one privately on your own laptop, and how to test one before you trust it with a datasheet. The concept course under the whole AI track.

Explain in plain words what an LLM does when it answers, and why it hallucinates
Choose a model for a job: context length, JSON output, local or hosted, licence
Write a prompt with role, task, context, format and a NOT FOUND rule

13 modules 10h 31mView course

FreeAI and machine learningBeginner

Prompt Engineering for Engineers

Not fifty ChatGPT prompts. The skill of specifying a task to a language model so precisely that the output can be checked — applied to FAT reports, procedures, I/O lists, fault-code guides, code and spreadsheets — and the habit of testing a prompt with a golden set before trusting it.

Write a five-part prompt with a refusal rule that turns invention into a visible blank
Fix output format with few-shot examples and get JSON with a schema at temperature 0
Make calculations checkable with chain of thought, and run the arithmetic as code

12 modules 7h 45mView course

FreeAI and machine learningBeginner

AI Agents and Workflow Automation with n8n

No-code automation with a language model in the loop, for the jobs an engineering office does by hand: triage maintenance tickets, send the 07:00 plant report, log a phone form into a register, watch a mailbox. n8n runs free on a laptop; the AI node points at a free model or a local Ollama. Every write goes through a human approval step.

Run n8n free on your own laptop and build a form-to-sheet-to-alert workflow
Read and shape data with expressions, Set, Split Out, Aggregate and Merge
Make a workflow safe to run unattended: retries, error workflow, idempotent writes

12 modules 19h 34mView course

FreeAI and machine learningIntermediate

RAG and Chatbots with LangChain

A skill AI job posts name again and again, built properly: a chatbot that answers from PLC and drive manuals, cites the page, refuses what it cannot find, and is measured on a test set. Loading and chunking, embeddings and hybrid search, the RAG chain, query translation, routing, re-ranking, evaluation, LangGraph agents and serving — on free models throughout.

Load, clean and chunk vendor manuals so parameter tables survive
Embed locally, search with hybrid BM25 + vector retrieval and re-rank with a cross-encoder
Build a RAG chain that cites (doc p.N), refuses with NOT FOUND and handles follow-ups

12 modules 11h 4mView course

Compare the Generative AI and ChatGPT courses

Course	Level	Modules	Video	Brand
AI Essentials for Work: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot	Beginner	9	3h 18m	Vendor-neutral
Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio Agents	Beginner	9	4h 27m	Microsoft
Excel with Copilot and AI for Finance and FP&A	Beginner	9	4h 50m	Vendor-neutral
Generative AI and LLM Foundations	Beginner	13	10h 31m	Vendor-neutral
Prompt Engineering for Engineers	Beginner	12	7h 45m	Vendor-neutral
AI Agents and Workflow Automation with n8n	Beginner	12	19h 34m	Vendor-neutral
RAG and Chatbots with LangChain	Intermediate	12	11h 4m	Vendor-neutral

How to choose

If you have never used an AI assistant at work, start with AI Essentials for Work, then Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agents if your organisation runs on Microsoft 365.

Engineers and developers should take Generative AI and LLM Foundations, then Prompt Engineering, then build with n8n agents or LangChain retrieval. Those three are technical; the first two are not.

Questions

Where do beginners start?: AI Essentials for Work, then Microsoft 365 Copilot or Prompt Engineering.
Do I need to code?: Not for AI Essentials or the Copilot courses. The n8n and LangChain courses are more technical and assume some comfort with code.
Which tools are covered?: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, n8n and LangChain.
Is it free, and is there a certificate?: Every lesson, note and assessment is free. The EDWartens certificate is optional and paid, and you can finish without it.