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Google Prompting Essentials

4.6(4,000) on Coursera·250K enrolled
Beginner 5 hours English SpecializationFREE
SkillsPrompt engineeringGenerative AIAI toolsPrompting techniquesAI productivity

Is this course right for you?

Our take
A short, practical, non-technical course on writing better prompts to get more from generative-AI tools. It is free to audit and short enough to finish quickly.

Good for: anyone who wants to write better prompts and get more from AI tools.

Skip if: you already prompt confidently, or you want to build AI systems.

Google covers prompt construction, zero-shot and few-shot prompting, iterative refinement, and common workplace uses across writing, data and analysis, aimed at professionals who use tools like Gemini, ChatGPT and Copilot at work rather than at AI researchers.

What it does not do is go deep or teach you to build AI systems — it is breadth across job functions, not depth in any one tool — so if you already prompt confidently, or you want to build with AI, it is not the right fit. Launched in 2024, Google keeps it updated as the tools change.

Comparison · LBS

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About this course

Google's Prompting Essentials certificate teaches practical prompt engineering for everyday work contexts — not for AI researchers, but for professionals who use AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Copilot to draft, summarize, analyze, and brainstorm in their jobs. It covers prompt construction, zero-shot and few-shot prompting, iterative refinement, and common workplace use cases across writing, data, and analysis.

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Developed by Google as part of its Grow with Google AI Essentials program, combining Google's AI expertise with workplace-applicable skill design.

Frequently asked questions

No. It is aimed squarely at non-technical professionals — marketers, HR, sales, operations people — who use or will use AI tools at work. There is no coding and no maths; it teaches how to write clear, effective instructions for generative AI in plain terms. If you can use everyday office software, you have everything you need to follow it comfortably.

A practical framework for prompting, built around a handful of clear steps, then applied to real work tasks: drafting emails, brainstorming, building tables and trackers, summarising documents, spotting patterns in data, and breaking big projects into steps. It also covers meta-prompting — using AI to help you write better prompts — so you leave with a repeatable method rather than a bag of one-off tricks.

Scope. Google AI Essentials is a broader program covering what AI is, productivity uses, responsible use, and keeping up with the field. Google Prompting Essentials is narrower and focused entirely on the skill of prompting effectively. If you already grasp AI basics and just want to get much better at getting useful results from tools like Gemini or ChatGPT, this focused one is the better fit.

It is short — around five hours — and most people finish it in a single day or across a couple of evenings. That brevity is deliberate: it is designed as a low-commitment, practical skill boost for busy professionals rather than a deep course, so you can pick up the method quickly and start applying it to your actual work almost immediately.

You can audit it on Coursera to watch the lessons at no cost; the quizzes and the shareable Google certificate need a subscription. For the modest time it asks, it is a worthwhile grounding if prompting is new to you — but if you already use AI tools heavily every day, much of it will feel familiar, and free resources like Google's and OpenAI's own prompting guides cover similar ground.
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