Demand for AI-literate professionals is growing across nontechnical fields, with employers placing a premium on workers who can effectively apply AI in their roles. As AI transforms the way organizations operate, many nontechnical professionals are left navigating complex terminology, competing technologies and vendor claims. This course closes that gap, giving professionals and managers practical knowledge and strategic decision-making skills to evaluate AI opportunities, guide adoption and use AI with confidence.

Designed for nontechnical professionals and functional managers who want practical, business-facing skills for evaluating, adopting and leading AI initiatives without needing to code, this course provides a foundation in major types of AI and their business applications. You’ll learn to assess AI technologies and determine which approaches best fit your organization’s needs.

Through lectures, hands-on workshops and real-world case studies, you’ll examine how organizations introduce AI strategically and manage the workforce changes that occur with adoption. You’ll also collaborate on a coached group project to design an agentic AI workflow for a process within your organization.

By the end of the course, you’ll have the practical skills to confidently identify, evaluate and lead high-impact AI initiatives and apply AI tools to improve productivity, decision-making and business outcomes.

Learning Outcomes
• Classify AI approaches and evaluate AI systems and vendor claims to determine their suitability for specific business problems
• Identify, scope and prioritize high-impact AI use cases by translating business processes into AI-ready problem definitions
• Design an AI strategy and implementation roadmap that considers build-versus-buy decisions and ethical, operational and organizational risks
• Develop an upskilling and change-management plan to support a workforce affected by AI adoption
• Apply a structured framework to analyze real-world AI implementations
• Design and, where feasible, pilot an AI-enabled process for an organization and present it to a peer and faculty panel

Skills You Will Gain
• AI literacy and technology evaluation
• AI use-case identification and prioritization
• Business process and AI opportunity analysis
• AI strategy and implementation planning
• AI risk and ethics assessment
• Build-versus-buy decision-making
• AI-enabled workflow design
• Workforce change management
• Cross-functional communication and facilitation
• Applied AI project development and presentation

Course Format and Pacing
This blended learning course includes a mix of instructor-led Zoom sessions and in-person workshops. Students will access the program through Canvas, UC Davis CPE’s learning management system. The course provides approximately 24 hours of live instruction, delivered through one weekly Zoom session and one weekly in-person workshop. Active engagement and participation are essential to fully benefit from the program and achieve the best learning outcomes.