AI 60 · Formerly COSA 65

Applied Conversational and Agentic AI

3 units No prerequisites Counts toward AI Fluency

What this course is

A chatbot answers. An agent acts. This course is about building both: assistants that hold a real conversation across many turns, and agents that take a goal and complete the task on their own. You’ll use no-code and low-code platforms, so the work is in the design, the testing, and the judgment, not in writing code.

Every build is human-centered. You’ll decide what the system should do, where a person must stay in the loop, and how it behaves when it’s unsure. The course ends with a portfolio project: a working AI agent or assistant, deployed, for a domain you care about.

Catalog description

Design and application of conversational and agentic AI systems: natural-language interaction, multi-turn dialogue, autonomous task completion. Using no-code and low-code platforms, learners design, test and deploy conversational assistants, workflow agents and domain-specific applications. Human-centered design, ethics, responsible deployment across business, education, customer service and healthcare. Portfolio project: a functional AI agent or assistant.

  • Design conversational systems that handle natural-language interaction and multi-turn dialogue.
  • Build and deploy workflow agents that complete tasks autonomously using no-code and low-code platforms.
  • Apply human-centered design and responsible-deployment practices across business, education, customer service and healthcare.

What you'll build

  • 1
    A conversational assistantA multi-turn assistant for a real domain, designed around how people actually ask for things, tested with real users.
  • 2
    A workflow agentAn agent that completes a task end to end on its own, with clear limits on what it may and may not do.
  • 3
    A portfolio project: a deployed agent or assistantA functional AI agent or assistant, deployed and documented, that you can show an employer.

Tools you'll use

VoiceflowZapierMakeClaudeCustom GPTsBotpress

No-code and low-code tools. The exact list is set by the instructor each term.

Student work

Project showcase opens after the first cohort. This section is designed in and hidden until then.