UK ALT Hub launches new AI literacy course for faculty and staff
LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 4, 2026) — The University of Kentucky Artificial Intelligence Literacy and Training (ALT) Hub, partnering with AI experts across campus, has released a new online training for faculty and staff focused on AI literacy.
This course is an initiative launched through the recently formed Commonwealth AI Transdisciplinary Strategy (CATS AI), the university’s comprehensive framework for advancing the responsible use of AI in education, research, health care and operations.
“Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming foundational to modern professional work,” said Tama Thé, M.D., assistant professor in College of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine. “To meet that need, we created this course, adapted from the undergraduate TEK 100 (Collaborative Intelligence — Understanding and Using Modern AI) curriculum, to be an entry point into AI for our faculty and staff.”
The course encompasses six modules, each designed around a separate skill or concept necessary to understanding modern AI and how to responsibly use it. A final project marks the endpoint of the course, where learners will identify a real-world problem in their departments, units or communities and propose AI-driven solutions.
“In the UK ALT Hub, we want to ensure AI is accessible and useful to everyone, and this training focuses on bringing that usability to all UK faculty and staff,” said Katherine Thompson, Ph.D., ALT Hub director and associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Dr. Bing Zhang Department of Statistics.
The training is fully online and asynchronous, so individuals can work through the modules at their own pace.
Below is a brief summary of each module.
- Module 1 — AI in Your World: Seeing the Invisible builds a foundation of AI vocabulary, helping guide learners to use AI as a brainstorming partner.
- Module 2 — The AI Co-Pilot: Communicating with AI builds skills in consistently getting better results through AI prompting strategies.
- Module 3 — The Expert Adversary: Stress-Testing Your Ideas challenges learners to begin using AI as a tool to build stronger proposals and ideas by challenging assumptions and simulating stakeholder perspectives.
- Module 4 — The Hallucination Detective helps learners build fact-checking skills and learn why AI tools can generate wrong answers.
- Module 5 — Personal Responsibility with Artificial Intelligence contains lessons on responsible AI use, privacy, digital footprints and academic integrity.
- Module 6 — Navigating AI’s Societal and System-Level Impact focuses on how AI shapes society through bias, workforce disruption and questions of accountability and governance.
Faculty and staff can expect to spend around four hours on core lectures, or 10 hours if they fully engage with the final project and guided labs. Learn more about CATS AI and enroll in the training here: https://akt.uky.edu/commonwealth-ai-transdisciplinary-strategy.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.