Home – Cycle 1 – Cycle 2 – Cycle 3 – Cycle 4 – Cycle 5 – Cycle 6
AI Literacy – Course Hub
Use it to access course materials, navigate the six experiment cycles, and follow along as you move through the course.
Today’s Materials
- Presentation (Prezi) – Independent Use
- Live Prezi – Will follow along with instructor as presented
- Downloadable PDF
Use these alongside the session. The presentation introduces each concept, and the cycle pages are where you will actively apply what is being demonstrated.
How This Works
The course is built around six experiment cycles. Each cycle introduces an idea, shows how it works, and gives you a way to practice it.
- Insight: What is happening and why it matters
- Technique: How to apply the idea
- Guided Experiment: A structured example
- Independent Experiment: Practice on your own
- Reflection: What changed and what to take away
You will repeat this process as you build new capabilities throughout the session.
Experiment Cycles
Each cycle builds on the one before it, moving from understanding how an LLM works to using your own judgment about what to trust and use.
Understand what a large language model is doing and how that affects the responses it generates.
Recognize what the AI cannot know unless you provide the context it needs.
Construct a clearer request using Role, Task, Input, and Output.
Improve the result through follow-up, correction, refinement, and iteration.
Use AI as a thinking partner to explore a situation, ask questions, compare possibilities, and help you work toward a decision.
Evaluate what the AI gives you, verify what matters, and make the final human decision.
How to Use This Page
- Start with the presentation.
- Move to the corresponding cycle when directed.
- Review the Insight and Technique.
- Complete the guided experiment with the instructor.
- Complete the independent experiments.
- Reflect on what changed and what you learned.
- Return here to continue to the next cycle.
Key Ideas
- AI responds to how you interact with it.
- The AI cannot use context you have not provided.
- Clearer direction improves alignment.
- Good results often come from steering and refining the conversation.
- AI can help you think, but it does not replace your judgment.
CIRAS (Center for Industrial Research And Service, ISU) • IIAI (Iowa Initiative for Artificial Intelligence, UofI) • TrAC (Translational Artificial Intelligence Center, ISU)
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This course was developed through a collaborative effort to advance AI literacy across organizations in Iowa.