--- title: "AI Foundations: A Practical AI Course for Professionals" description: "A self-paced AI course for non-technical professionals. Learn to work with AI using your own work, at your own pace. $399 CAD, lifetime access, 30-day guarantee." canonical_url: "https://www.upskailed.com/programs/foundations" md_url: "https://www.upskailed.com/programs/foundations.md" last_updated: "2026-08-06" --- # AI Foundations for Professionals You’ve used AI, and you’ve gotten useful things out of it. Underneath that, you may have a quiet sense that there’s more here you’re not seeing. You’re right, and it isn’t a matter of intelligence or effort. The gap is that almost no one gets shown what these tools can do, or how to work with them on purpose. AI Foundations is built to close that gap, at your own pace, using your own work, with no tech background needed. **Price:** $399 CAD, one-time, with lifetime access **Format:** Self-paced and online, start anytime **Includes:** Recorded lessons, hands-on exercises, the participant community, and a certificate of completion **Guarantee:** 30-day money-back ## What you’ll learn AI Foundations is built on one idea: used with intent, these tools help you do more thorough work and reach ideas you’d have missed, in less time than the work used to take. You’ll learn a way of working that holds up across whatever platform you choose, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and you’ll practice it on your own tasks as you go, so what you build is useful from day one. The course runs in three parts. ### Understand the tools and pick one It helps to know what you’re working with before you rely on it. You’ll see how these models work, where they’re headed, and what that means for how you use them day to day. From there, you’ll get a feel for how the major platforms differ and choose the one that suits how you think. This part is AI Literacy 101 and Picking a Platform. ### Get consistent, useful results Most of the distance between a vague answer and a sharp one comes down to how you set up the work. You’ll learn to communicate with AI clearly, give it the context it needs, and treat it as a thought partner instead of a search box. Then you’ll build reusable assistants and procedures so you stop starting over every time you open a chat. This part is Prompting and Effective AI Collaboration, and Procedures and AI Helper Personas. ### Research and go further AI changes what research can look like. You’ll learn to use it as a research partner, work through questions in depth, and turn a stack of sources into something clear you can act on. Because the tools keep moving, the course also includes a module on the newer capabilities worth knowing, with more added over time. This part is Researching with AI, and Advanced Features and Emerging Trends, which is included and arriving in the coming weeks. ## How the course works Everything is self-paced. You can begin the moment you enroll and move at whatever speed your week allows. The recorded lessons are the smaller part of the experience. Around each one, you put the ideas to work on your own tasks, with short written guides and a few hand-picked readings alongside the videos. You’ll begin with a quick snapshot of where you are with AI today, and the reflections you write through the course live in a workbook that’s yours to keep. **Video lessons:** 2.5 hours, three parts **Applied practice:** 45 to 90 minutes per module **Workbook:** Yours to keep **On completion:** Community access and a certificate ## Where this comes from AI Foundations grew out of a year and a half of training sessions, workshops, keynotes, and consulting for educational institutions, businesses, startup founders, and not-for-profit organizations. It was built to close the same gaps in understanding and practical use I’ve watched capable people run into firsthand, over and over. In numbers: 1½ years teaching AI in the field, 5 live cohorts refining this course, and 50+ workshops and keynotes. ## Start when you’re ready $399 CAD, one-time payment. Lifetime access and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Enroll whenever it suits you and start the same day. - [Enroll now](https://learn.upskailed.com/checkout/ai-foundations) - [Questions first? Get in touch](/contact) ## Common questions ### Do I need any technical background? No. If you can use email and a web browser, you’re ready. The course is built for non-technical professionals, and nothing in it assumes you’ve coded or worked in tech. ### What AI tools will I need? One paid AI subscription, around $20 to $30 a month, is enough to get the full value. You can start on free versions and upgrade once you’ve found the platform you prefer, which is part of what the early modules help you do. ### How much time does it take? The videos are about two and a half hours total, and you’ll want roughly 45 to 90 minutes per module to work through the exercises on your own tasks. It’s self-paced with lifetime access, so there’s no deadline and no pace to keep up with. ### What if I’ve already been using AI? Most people who take this have. The common experience is finding out how much more was possible than they realized, even for tasks they thought they’d figured out. If you already know the basics, the course sharpens how you work and fills in the gaps that are hard to spot on your own. ### How is this different from free tutorials? Free videos can show you features. What’s harder to find is someone showing you how to think about these tools, what to use them for, and how to fit them into the work you already do. That’s what this course is, and it’s why people who’ve watched plenty of tutorials still find a lot here they hadn’t seen. ### Can I expense it? Yes, and many people do. Your enrollment includes a template you can adapt to ask your manager or board, and there’s a tool right on this page that drafts the email for you. ### What’s the refund policy? There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’ve worked through the course and it hasn’t moved your skills forward, reach out within 30 days for a full refund. ## Expense it Looking to expense the course? Here’s an email you can adapt for your manager or board. **Subject:** Professional development request: Upskailed AI Foundations ($399 CAD) Hi [manager’s name], I’d like to use part of my professional development budget on a course called AI Foundations for Professionals from Upskailed. It’s a self-paced course built for non-technical professionals. It covers practical skills for working with AI: clear prompting, building custom AI assistants, research workflows, and fitting these tools into day-to-day work. The approach works across platforms, so the skills carry over no matter which AI tools we use now or adopt later. The course was built by Jonathon Bloomfield, who has spent the past year and a half running training, workshops, keynotes, and consulting on practical AI for schools, businesses, startup founders, and nonprofits, and refined the material across five live cohorts. For $399 CAD, a one-time cost with lifetime access, I’d get: - About two and a half hours of recorded lessons, plus hands-on exercises I complete using my own work - A way of working with AI that applies across tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others) - Access to the participant community - A certificate of completion - A 30-day money-back guarantee It’s self-paced, so it won’t conflict with my workload, and the focus is on making my existing work more thorough and less time-consuming. I’d be applying what I learn directly to my current work from the first module. I’d like to go ahead with this. Let me know if that works. Thanks, [your name] ## Also available **AI Mastery** (Fall 2026): A 6-week live program, two hours a week with Jonathon, that picks up where Foundations leaves off. It’s small-group and hands-on. [Join the waitlist](/programs/mastery) **Training for your team:** Custom training for teams and organizations, designed around your group’s work and led by Jonathon. [Explore corporate training](/services/corporate-training) ## Sitemap - [Browse every markdown page](/sitemap.md) - [Read the concise site summary](/llms.txt) - [Read the complete site content](/llms-full.txt)