Blueprint for impact
Get a look at the pillars shaping this course.
While development is still underway, these highlights offer an early look at the skills and outcomes you’ll be working toward:
Flexible. Applied. Built for business.
Exploring this for your team, not just yourself? You’re in the right place. This course is still in development, making it an ideal time to explore how it could support your workforce goals. Whether you're planning ahead or seeking a strategic fit, we’ll help tailor the experience so it delivers value for your team from day one.
AI at Work: From Blueprint to Build Mode
Move from AI experimentation to strategic solution design in this hands-on build studio. Leave with a custom assistant in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, or a similar platform—tested, working, and ready to refine.
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Description
Out-of-the-box AI can be impressive, but it does not know your team’s language, source materials, standards, decision points, or what good work looks like. In this hands-on build studio, you will turn that internal know-how into a working assistant for a recurring workflow, use case, or priority task—creating a reusable tool that supports real business work. During the studio, you will build, test, and improve the assistant in real time to see how it performs against the work and related goals you brought to the workshop.
Before the workshop, you will share an assistant blueprint from Workshop 1 or connect with us to confirm your use case, goals, and approved materials. Our instructors review that preparation in advance so they can anticipate questions and provide focused guidance as you build. In a public session, you will apply the build process to your own use case with instructor support. Customized training creates more room to shape shared examples, activities, and assistant design around your organization’s approved materials, workflows, standards, and goals.
During the session, you will define the assistant’s job, context, trusted materials, instructions, examples, guardrails, and review steps. Then you will test it against representative scenarios, identify where it needs more direction, and refine it with instructor support. You will leave with a working assistant, a clearer understanding of what makes it reliable and useful, and a practical plan for testing and improving it in your role or team.
Outcomes
By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
- Define the Assistant’s Job
Turn a recurring task, workflow, or use case into a clear assistant purpose, scope, boundaries, and human-led decision points that guide the build. - Build with What You Know
Create a custom assistant shaped by approved source materials, internal context, instructions, examples, standards, and goals from your role or team. - Set It Up for Better Work
Design prompts, questions, workflow steps, guardrails, and review checks that help the assistant deliver more useful, reliable support for recurring work. - Test It in Context
Run your assistant through representative scenarios to see where it helps, where it needs more direction, and how it fits the work before you take it back. - Refine the Build
Troubleshoot issues such as vague output, missing context, inconsistent formatting, drift, or weak workflow alignment, then make targeted improvements. - Take a Working Tool Forward
Leave with a functioning custom assistant and a plan to test, refine, and apply it responsibly through ongoing use, review, and feedback in your role or team.
The Learning Experience
This in-person, four-hour build studio runs from 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. and is intentionally limited to a small cohort. That creates more room for individual instructor guidance as you configure, test, troubleshoot, and refine your assistant.
Bring a laptop and access to an approved paid AI platform, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, so you can build directly during the session. No coding or technical development experience is required. Use only materials your organization has approved for the selected platform. Do not upload confidential, proprietary, client, employee, or other sensitive information unless that use has been explicitly approved.
Participants who completed Workshop 1 should bring their assistant blueprint. To join Workshop 2 directly, connect with us before registering so we can confirm your use case, approved materials, and preparation for a successful build.
During the studio, you will work through guided build activities, live demonstrations, and representative scenarios from your role or team. With instructor support, you will shape the assistant, test how it responds, identify where it needs more context or direction, and refine it into a working tool you can continue using and improving after the workshop.
Can I use my organization’s materials?
Bring only materials your organization has approved for use in the selected AI platform. If data privacy, intellectual property, or approval questions are still being clarified, use non-sensitive, representative, or de-identified examples. The workshop helps you identify what needs to be resolved before workplace materials are used with AI.
Cost
Enroll now
You will be directed to our secure course registration and payment system.
If you need assistance with registration, our team is here to help. Contact us at (585) 475-2400 or certified@rit.edu.
Ready when you are
This course is not currently open for enrollment, but that doesn’t mean the opportunity has to wait.
If this course aligns with your goals or your team’s needs, let us know. Your interest helps us plan future sessions and may even accelerate the timeline. We also offer custom options for organizations looking to run tailored versions of this experience.
Hear from the experts
Watch an introduction by the creator of this course, [name]
Insight
Value
Meet Your Instructors
Our workshops are led by practitioners who pair real-world workflow experience with evidence-based learning design—so sessions are practical, engaging, and immediately applicable.
Thérèse Hannigan is a designer, strategist, and longtime business owner who has spent decades leading client projects and building human-centered digital experiences across industries. She now integrates AI into the same creative and strategic workflows—framing problems, synthesizing inputs, developing messaging, and iterating ideas—so teams can move faster with more clarity and stronger outcomes. She founded and led a design/UX studio acquired in 2019 and is a tenured faculty member in RIT’s College of Art and Design.
Mark Ferguson is an instructional designer, educational technologist, and experienced educator with over 15 years in education, including a decade focused on faculty development, online learning, and higher education innovation. He specializes in designing and facilitating high-impact workshops for adult learners, grounded in evidence-based instructional design and adult learning theory. His work blends deep expertise in curriculum design and emerging technologies—including AI—with coaching and collaborative program development.
Private Delivery and Customized Training
Private delivery gives your organization a dedicated session of this build studio for your team alone. The core learning experience, outcomes, and build activities remain the same, without outside participants.
Customized training builds from that foundation to shape examples, guided build activities, and assistant-design work around your organization’s approved materials, shared workflows, standards, and goals. For cross-functional teams, this can include examining how work moves between roles, clarifying what good output looks like, and identifying shared review practices. For team leaders and internal champions, it can create a practical starting point for guiding responsible AI use and supporting continued refinement after the workshop.
Customization can address your:
- Priority roles, teams, workflows, and implementation goals
- Approved source materials, knowledge bases, brand standards, and internal language
- Cross-team use cases, policies, approval paths, and review practices
- Current AI tools, governance needs, and organizational expectations
Need something deeper? RIT Certified can scope a bespoke engagement that may include workflow discovery, approved-material review, tailored learning design, assistant blueprints, or customized AI-supported tools.
Contact us to explore private delivery, customized training, or a bespoke engagement.
Pathways and certificates
This course is part of a broader mastery certificate.
Explore how it fits into a full learning journey.
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