Indiana University has opened its online course on generative artificial intelligence free to anyone.
The course, GenAI 101, teaches students how to use AI ethically and effectively. Eight modules and 16 lessons allow participants to gain skills in prompt engineering, data storytelling and fact-checking AI-generated content. The course also offers a conversational AI learning agent that provides real-time support.
Since the course launched in August, over 114,000 students, faculty and staff have enrolled. In October, after IU expanded the course to over 800,000 alumni worldwide, an additional thousands of people enrolled.
Brian Williams, a professor in the Kelley School of Business who helped develop the course, said since launching the course, he’s gotten a lot of positive feedback. Since then, there has also been high demand from the public to take the course. Williams received emails about it from people in Indiana and around the country.
“We think what we're doing is helpful, the evals show that it is helpful for some people,” he said. “And so we thought it'd be really a nice public service to be able to make it free for anyone who wanted to take it.”
Many AI certification courses cost between $1,500 and $5,000. Williams said IU made its course free to make it more accessible.
“There's certainly not very many AI courses with a certification from a university like IU,” Williams said, “and especially right now, with how much talk there is in AI and the job market and disruptions, we thought it would be just a really nice thing that could be beneficial.”
According to a study from Access Partnership and Amazon Web Services, 92 percent of organizations surveyed plan to use AI by 2028. About 88 percent of workers expect to use AI in their daily work by 2028.
“More and more jobs are requiring or requesting AI skills, right? So how do you document you have AI skills?” Williams said. “Let's say you're a 38-year-old accountant in the workforce. How do you document you have AI skills. That's a hard thing to do, but through this free course, now you can do it. You can say, hey, I am AI certified. I know these 37 basic skills, right? So that's, I think, really helpful.”
The course became available to the public Thursday. Williams said in the first five hours, 500 people enrolled. People can enroll in the course on IU’s website.
