Ebook

A Team Toolkit
for Learning Essential
Generative AI Skills
Introduction
Generative AI is not the next big thing, it is the big thing. Getting teams
comfortable and familiar with this technology so they begin using it regularly
in the flow of work is a business imperative. Generative AI tools, such as
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing, bring the power of AI
to everyone, not just those within the technology industry — provided that they
have the space, time, and support to learn how to use those tools.

As is the case with any new skill set, employees who have access to a
progressive learning experience founded in positive reinforcement learn
more effectively. This is all the more true with a disruptive and revolutionary
technology like generative AI. Whether you’ve already gone to market with a
generative AI-powered offering or just learned what ChatGPT is, Udemy has
the breadth and level of content required for your organization.

Udemy is uniquely positioned to support customers through this change due

to our already extensive course catalog in generative AI and related topics. We
are the only company whose content generation and curation process moves
at the speed of innovation, backed up by the partnership our customer success
team provides in helping you achieve your learning goals.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 2

Sample Learning Program

Design learning for

progressive skills acquisition
Learning a new skill set, particularly one anchored in a revolutionary new technology,
can feel intimidating to employees. They may not be sure how to approach the
subject and apply it to their day-to-day work.

Structure the learning experience: Plan a series of meetings or lessons for the
team that progressively introduce the new technology and build on the capabilities
reviewed in previous sessions. Create an environment of experimentation where
employees can try out new ways of working and thinking without directly affecting
work outcomes. This removes the pressure and anxiety associated with performing
and allows employees to gain confidence in their newly learned skills. Then take
steps to integrate the new tool and skills into work processes.

As a strategy for helping your team acquire these skills, consider setting aside time
on a regular basis — such as repurposing a portion of every other team meeting — to
focus on learning. Then pair topics covered with asynchronous learning assignments:

Prework Udemy’s internal Learning team

found these Udemy courses helpful:
Enroll all team members in
a structured learning course
that will help them acquire
the basics of using generative
AI. This will enable them to ChatGPT: Complete ChatGPT ChatGPT 101: Supercharge Your

come to the first meeting with Course For Work 2023 (Ethically)!
Steve Ballinger, MBA
Work & Life (750+ Prompts inc)
Sean Melis
the foundational knowledge 4.5 (15,618 ratings) 4.4 (2,365 ratings)

required to participate.
Learn more Learn more

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 3

Example learning experience
1
Meeting 1
Provide an introduction and
overview of the tool, even if it’s
a review of the prework. After a
demonstration, include hands-on
exploration for all participants,
including some concrete prompts to
guide their initial experimentation.
2
Meeting 2
Review as a team how this
experimentation went, including
what worked and what didn’t work
well. Based on those experiments,
brainstorm possible areas where
team members can leverage
generative AI in their work.
3
Meeting 3
Review what team members learned
during the week. Then, as a team,
discuss norms, guiding principles,
or rules governing the usage of
generative AI. Solicit input on where
people want more guidance or
how they have already found ways
to self-govern. Based on those
individual inputs, lead the team
through a process of generating
and documenting group norms.
Assignment 1
Participants choose one day
before the second meeting to use
the generative AI tool as much as
possible at home and/or at work. Ask
them to make notes of how they tried
to use it and what the outcomes of
those experiments were.
Assignment 2
Following the second meeting,
encourage team members to dive
deeper into practicing the specific
applications they outlined in the
previous meeting. Ask them to
call out what was effective and
what wasn’t and what they had to
modify in order to make the AI more
effective in the process.
Assignment 3
As a follow-up to the synchronous
discussion above, ask the team
to asynchronously collaborate on
three to five guiding principles for
using generative AI. Encourage
them to seek out others in the
company who are leveraging this
technology, discover what they are
uncovering about usage, and then
incorporate that information into
these principles, as well.
A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 4
Change management guide

Driving better
learning outcomes
As you introduce your team to generative AI, integrate the following
approaches to engage learners more effectively and help them be
more successful.

Note that while you are planning how to implement these tools
with your team, it’s important to consider how to do so responsibly.
AI tools pose unique risks to confidential and sensitive information.

This guidance provided here is only intended for enabling teams

rather than entire organizations. For those looking to support
enablement organization-wide, please reach out to your customer
success team. Whether you are enabling a team or a company, we
suggest that you consult with your legal advisor for guidance on
how to properly protect your company’s information.

APPROACH #1

Commit the time to learn generative

AI skills — as a team
Declaring a focus on learning is not enough. Teams easily see through the rhetoric
when leaders declare a focus but offer no follow-up. An authentic focus on learning
requires space and time carved out of busy work days to acquire new skills. Often it
is the leader of a team who is best positioned to ensure that this takes place.

TIPS Program team learning time at regular intervals

Set aside time that you already have, like a team meeting. For example,
commit half of a meeting, three times in a quarter, to learn together.
Provide a consistent meeting structure
Kick off each meeting with an agenda and include an asynchronous
assignment following your time together. Identify a few members of the team
to bring this to life, rather than relying solely on a team manager or leader.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 5

APPROACH #2

Prepare people to succeed

This is a new tool, requiring new skills. While learning that builds upon prior
knowledge and previous learning is effective, additional measures can help people
become more skilled more quickly.

TIPS Use small group practice to start

In the first meeting, begin with small group practice time in the tool on a non-
work-related prompt. The small group reduces the pressure of solo efforts
and, because the practice is non-work-related, people feel more at ease to
experiment. Consider using it to plan an upcoming vacation or meal planning.
Build the knowledge base from the beginning
Generative AI tools are not the same as traditional search tools. Providing
pre-work that helps teams understand how to engineer prompts and talking
as a team about this topic early on is key.

APPROACH #3

Celebrate wins
As people use these tools more and more often and with greater efficacy, they will
discover ever more ways to get real-world value from them. Don’t mandate this
process, but celebrate it when it happens.

TIPS Empower the team to shift the focus to work

When your team seems comfortable enough using the tool, shift the focus
from general experimentation to experimenting with sample use cases that
are useful to their specific roles and responsibilities. Allow your team to take
the lead on generating these ideas to encourage ownership and creative
experimentation, as this will make them more likely to continue using
generative AI.
Celebrate successes
Create a space for the team to share wins with generative AI, and follow
up each with a short discussion of what was learned, how work quality
improved, whether time or dollars were saved, or how individual team
members saw benefit.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 6

APPROACH #4

Expect varied levels of enthusiasm

With all new forms of technology, people fall on a curve when it comes to early
acceptance — or the absence thereof. generative AI is no exception. Don’t seek to
persuade your team that they should be using the tool; seek instead to familiarize
them with how to do it. As people become more comfortable with its usage and
aware of its capabilities, check-in and see if their opinion is evolving.

TIP Focus on the long game

The goal here is to become familiar and experiment with a new technology,
not to mandate how it will be used. Encourage constructive debate within
your team to arrive at a collective point of view. If you want to share your
long-term vision for generative AI, focus on communicating it later, once the
team is comfortable using it.

APPROACH #5

Ensure consistent and

responsible usage
While learning about this tool, use the opportunity to discuss any emerging norms
and expectations for use. Norms are most effective when they are surfaced bottom-
up rather than top-down, so don’t shy away from discussing tough questions with
team members.

TIP Discuss usage expectations early and often as a team

For example: What is our policy for attributing usage? How do we ensure
the correct use of information and avoid plagiarism? How can we maintain
business and customer confidentiality, if necessary? Are there scenarios
where we feel that the usage of generative AI is not appropriate? It is likely
that your organization will generate official policies around these points; if
they haven’t already, you can suggest they begin with the norms and guiding
principles that your team has documented.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 7

Putting Theory
into Practice:
How the Udemy Learning Team
transitioned from learning AI to applying it

In April 2023, Udemy’s internal Learning team focused

on learning generative AI tools and techniques. This
team made the following observations about the
process and suggested additional approaches and tips
to make the learning meaningful and engaging.

AI Solution Use Case

Generating
manager training
assessment items
In revamping Udemy’s manager development
program, Udemy Manager, the Learning Team
aimed to incorporate a skills assessment on the
Udemy platform as part of the new design. This
posed significant challenges in terms of time,
cost, and resources. The solution — leveraging
the generative AI technology, ChatGPT — led
to substantial improvements in speed and
efficiency while maintaining quality.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 8

What was the challenge?
Developing a quality bank of assessment items requires considerable expertise,
multiple stakeholders, and significant lead time. These assessment items also
come with some vendor costs and lengthy development processes. The challenge
was to generate a pilot assessment of 30 high-quality items under tight deadlines
and within budget.

Time was short, with only four months between the kick-off exploration and the
target launch date, whereas developing an assessment with the typical process
takes closer to six month
The estimated vendor cost of the typical process, in addition to the cost of
internal resources — would be beyond the limited budget allotted to the project
Human resources for the process were also limited, with only a few days
available from two team members to dedicate to the project, whereas the
typical process requires much more time from six or more people

How would the team generate the 30 items needed, without breaking
the budget or the timeline?

What were the possible solutions?

Before turning to AI, the team explored various options:

1. Outsourcing to a vendor: This is the typical process, but because of the cost
and the longer production time frame that would deliver the items past the
target launch date, it was not feasible for this project.

2. Internal Subject Matter Expert (SME) authoring: An internal learning designer

could train the team’s management SME in item writing, and they could work
closely together to develop the items themselves. However, this approach was
time-intensive and created significant additional work that was not planned for.
Since it was also a new skill for the team, time to deliver would also be extended.

3. Internal item-writing retreat: By recruiting 10 Udemy managers to attend a one-

day, intensive item-writing workshop, developed and delivered by internal learning
designers. These managers might be able to write three usable items each by the
end of the day. But, this approach would be very resource and time-intensive for
participating managers, with the additional risk of not achieving usable results.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 9

How did the Learning Team leverage
generative AI to explore a solution?
Each of those three solutions explored came with pros and cons. Given the team
was currently learning and experimenting with generative AI, an AI-driven solution
emerged. Leveraging generative AI’s advanced capabilities in text generation, the
Learning Team developed a prompt that provided the generative AI tool with the
learning objectives and style requirements for the assessment items. This enabled the
AI to speedily generate an initial item set, which the team then reviewed and refined to
create the final assessment. Using this approach, the team completed the project in a
fraction of the time and cost that would have been required by other approaches.

What were the outcomes?

Developing a quality bank of assessment items requires considerable expertise, multiple
stakeholders, and significant lead time. These assessment items also come with some
vendor costs and lengthy development processes. The challenge was to generate a pilot
assessment of 30 high-quality items under tight deadlines and within budget.

1. Time efficiency: Generating 30 items took about one day, rather than the four to
six weeks that a vendor typically requires.

2. Streamlined review process: The Learning Designer could edit and finesse the
items in real-time during generation, and afterward, the Sr. Learning Partner could
also edit them directly. This approach saved hours usually spent providing detailed
feedback to human authors for them to then integrate asynchronously.

3. Lower cost: By not outsourcing the work to a vendor, vendor fees were saved.

What’s next?
Following the remarkable success of the generative AI implementation in this use case,
the team is eager to find other applications.

1. Pilot this skills assessment: Continue working on the assessment and pilot it
within the revamped Udemy Manager development program, gathering feedback to
guide further improvements.

2. Explore broader applications: Share our findings with other internal teams to
optimize existing processes and investigate scalability.

A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 10

More Udemy Learning Team
AI use cases and resulting
outcomes
In addition to the manager training assessment items use case, the Learning
Team has also found multiple other uses for generative AI in their work processes:

Utilized ChatGPT to synthesize the top three skills desired from a

qualitative application question within a mentoring program application.
Leveraged across 100+ applications, this approach enabled deep insights
into skills development within the organization, saving hours of time and
increasing quality-of-match.
Utilized ChatGPT to create course descriptions that required a specific
word count. With just a couple of minutes spent providing prompts on key
points about the course and a suggested word length, ChatGPT was able to
provide a draft that was then quickly edited and utilized. This early drafting
saved 30 minutes of administrative time per course created.
Utilized ChatGPT to synthesize wording on early drafts of a newly
launched Career Levels framework, prompting it to offer suggestions to make
descriptions more concise while supporting consistency across descriptions
for progressive levels. ChatGPT was also prompted to create a framework
from scratch around identified categories as a quick stress test of the
framework in development.

The authors generated some of this text with GPT-4, OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model.
Upon generating draft language, the authors reviewed, edited, and revised the language to their own liking,
and they take ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.

About Udemy Business

Udemy’s mission is to improve lives through learning by providing flexible, effective skills development
to empower organizations and individuals.

Udemy Business enables employers to offer on-demand learning for all employees, immersive learning
for tech teams and cohort learning for leaders. With our complete learning solution and strategic
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A Team Toolkit for Learning Essential Generative AI Skills 11