Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT

The course works through concrete, named techniques — the persona pattern, few-shot prompting, structured approaches — with enough worked examples that you can actually apply them afterwards. That framing is the value: it's aimed at people who want to write better prompts, so if your real goal is building applications on the API, you want a developer course instead. Audit it free on Coursera; a certificate needs a subscription or Coursera Plus, with financial aid on offer.

One thing to check before enrolling: AI tools move fast, so confirm the course has been kept current — though the pattern-based approach it teaches ages better than tool-specific tips would (as of 2026).

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT, from Vanderbilt's Jules White, treats prompting as a skill with repeatable patterns rather than a bag of tricks. It works through concrete techniques — the persona pattern, few-shot prompting, templates, and ways to make the model reason step by step — using plenty of worked examples you can copy and adapt.