AI Education and Training¶

AI Literacy and Capability Framework¶

Overview¶

During seminars, workshops, and talks, the prerequisite level of computer and AI literacy is often not clearly conveyed. This can result in a mismatch between participant expectations and the presented materials.

The Practicum AI Literacy and Capability Framework is designed to solve this by providing a standard, AI/ML-centered taxonomy. This framework allows us to communicate AI/ML educational complexity at a glance, using visual cues associated with specific content focus and prerequisite computer literacy expectations.

Expand to see the details of the AI Literacy and Capability Framework.

The 8-Tier Taxonomy¶

The taxonomy ranges from simple fact recall and foundational awareness (Tier 1) up through high-level computer science and programming content (Tier 8).

Note: Tier 3 is a specialized tier geared towards understanding AI at a level appropriate for administration and policy-making.

Functional Status	Example Focus	Required Literacy (Prerequisite)
Foundational AI Awareness	History, use-cases, 'What is AI?'	General: Web navigation, file management
Applied AI Tools	ChatGPT, Claude, iterative drafting	Standard Office: Uploads, browser extensions
AI/ML for Administrators	Auditing, FERPA/HIPAA, Policy	Institutional: Privacy standards, Institutional structures
Visual Workflow Building	Custom GPTs, Scratch, GUI training	Logic-Base: If/Then logic, advanced spreadsheets
Automated System Integration	n8n, Gumloop, API systems	Power User: Data flow, API Keys, Webhooks
AI/ML Script Execution	Python scripts, Jupyter Notebooks	Entry Dev: Command Line, pip/conda
AI/ML Customization	Fine-tune models, HiPerGator/HPC	Systems Expert: Linux/Bash, SSH, SLURM
Core AI/ML Architecture	Novel algorithms, software stacks	Math/CS Expert: Linear Algebra, Calculus, C++/CUDA/Python

Implementation Guidance¶

When publishing courses or workshops: - Highlight the specific tier for the level of the course. - Include the tiers directly above and below for context and reference. - For broad workshops, multiple tiers can be highlighted to indicate a wider breadth of material, provided the surrounding context tiers are also shown.

Example of Possible Implementation¶

If you are hosting a workshop that focuses on Visual Workflow Building (Tier 4), the badge should highlight Tier 4 while including Tiers 3 and 5 for context:

Functional Status	Example Focus	Required Literacy (Prerequisite)
AI/ML for Administrators*	Auditing, FERPA/HIPAA, Policy	Institutional: Privacy standards, Institutional structures
Visual Workflow Building	Custom GPTs, Scratch, GUI training	Logic-Base: If/Then logic, advanced spreadsheets
Automated System Integration	n8n, Gumloop, API systems	Power User: Data flow, API Keys, Webhooks

Practicum AI¶

Practicum AI, an AI training program developed by the UFIT Research Computing Training team, is a hands-on applied AI curriculum intended for students with limited coding and math background. Using hands-on exercises and graphically based, conceptual content, our hope is to support learners who seek to begin applied, code-based, AI research.

NaviGator Toolkit¶

Check out the NaviGator Toolkit page for more information on using NaviGator Toolkit.

NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI)¶

Nvidia DLI provides a variety of online education and training materials in AI, accelerated computing, and accelerated data science for developers, data science researchers, students, and educators.

Online Courses ¶

The self-paced and hands-on online courses covers many AI topics. The education institutions can request a course code to cover the cost for up to 200 people.

Educator Programs ¶

Free Teaching Kits	DLI Ambassador Program
DLI Teaching Kits are co-developed by university professors/educators, industrial partners, and Nvidia engineers and scientists. The teaching kits come with lecture materials and hands-on exercises, quiz and exam sets. They can be used as they are or be integrated into teaching curriculums. The qualified educators applied for the teaching kits also receive the course code for online courses.	The DLI Ambassador Program is designed for qualified university educator to be certified as DLI Instructors to deliver free DLI workshops at university campuses. Through the campus workshops, the students and staff can obtain the course certifications and add them on their resumes. The program and application are free.

Coursera AI Courses¶

Coursera offers a plethora of online course on a variety of AI topics. The following are popular machine learning and deep learning courses at introductory level.

Deep Learning
- Deep Learning five course series:
  - Neural Networks and Deep Learning (DL)
  - Improving DL Networks: hyper-parameter tuning, regularization and optimization
  - Structuring machine learning projects
  - Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)
  - Sequence Models
Machine Learning
- This course gives a broad introduction to machine learning, data mining and pattern recognition.
Generative Adversarial Networks
- Three courses on GANs techniques:
  - Build Basic Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
  - Build Better GANs
  - Apply GANs

MathWorks¶

MathWorks provides courses on machine learning and deep learning using MATLAB.