SKL 175: A.I. Literacy
Undergraduate course, Southern Virginia University, 2026
An introduction to artificial intelligence for every student: how these systems work, how to use them well, and when to use them at all. No programming or mathematics background is assumed.
About the course
This is a short, seven-meeting course taught as a breakout session of SVU 101. It develops a conceptual understanding of AI systems as statistical programs trained on data, surveys the major tools and the vocabulary needed to talk about them, builds practical skill in prompting and in checking AI output, and examines the environmental, social, and ethical questions these systems raise.
The course moves through three questions:
- How does it work? What AI is, neural networks, and natural language.
- How do I use it? The tools available, and a hands-on prompting workshop.
- When should I use it? Ethical considerations, and the difference between using AI at work and using it in school, where the point is to do the thinking yourself.
The classroom is a working room, not a lecture hall: short before-class videos and readings, live polls, demonstrations, and hands-on work. Students finish by presenting a field report.
Prerequisites: None.
Syllabus (Fall 2026)
Helpful resources
- 3Blue1Brown: Neural Networks. Visual explanations of how neural networks and large language models work, with no background required for the first videos.
- LMArena leaderboard. A live ranking of AI models based on head-to-head comparisons by users. A good way to see how many tools there are and how quickly the ranking changes.
- TensorFlow Playground. Train a tiny neural network in your browser and watch it learn.