Career Readiness Without a Subscription: Teaching Professional AI Skills with Free Tools
Abstract
To highlight the power of free GenAI models as a career readiness tool, this 90-minute workshop features the hands-on application of six activities designed to support students' career development through personal branding, company insights, and fit evaluation by leveraging GenAI prompts. While paid GenAI subscriptions offer expanded functionality and higher-quality outputs, students – especially those who are first-generation, community college transfers, or enrolled at teaching-focused or resource-constrained institutions – may have less consistent access to paid GenAI tools. These activities are intentionally designed within the constraints of freely available GenAI models, highlighting how career readiness instruction can be delivered without requiring paid subscriptions. Beginners and novice users of GenAI will appreciate the structure and ease of use with the six ready-to-go prompts, while the interactive roundtable format allows more advanced GenAI users to elaborate on the prompts being discussed. Following a brief introduction of the career search challenges students face and how GenAI can support career readiness, participants join roundtables to gain first-hand experience inputting prompts into free versions of three of the most popular GenAI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, and Co-Pilot) to support students during three stages of the job search process. Participants leave the PDW with six prompts to share with their own students, along with an invitation to add new activities to a collaborative document for year-round sharing of ideas.
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| Career Readiness Without a Subscription: Teaching Professional AI Skills with Free Tools |
| Sunday, August 2, 2026 · 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT · Pennsylvania Convention Center, 105B |
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Shammi Gandhi
Assistant Professor
University of Northern Colorado
Timnath CO
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