AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
Most people learn Claude by just chatting: you pick up the features you stumble into and never meet the ones you didn't think to ask about. Each conversation goes a little better, so it feels like learning, but you end up with a patchwork of habits. The other trap is bookmarking six free courses and finishing none.
The rule: pick one course that matches the work you do this month, pass every quiz in it, and use what each lesson teaches on a real task before you start the next lesson.
Anthropic's free learning site is now called Claude Academy and lives at academy.claude.com. Older links to anthropic.com/learn redirect there. Many articles still point to the previous home on Skilljar, which remains up and is still used by partner learners. Start on the new site.
| You need | Detail at time of writing |
|---|---|
| A Claude account | A free account is enough. The Academy FAQ says you don't need a paid plan or a work account. |
| Cost | £0. You can browse the catalogue without signing in. Signing in saves your progress and lets you earn badges. |
| Time | Listed lengths run from 45 minutes to about 9 hours. The FAQ says these are estimates, and finishing faster still counts. |
| Nothing to install | Everything runs in the browser. Some lessons ask you to try a feature inside Claude itself. |
The catalogue listed 24 courses when we checked, plus tutorials and use cases. Figures below come from the course pages.
| Course | What it does | Cost | Best for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude 101 | First conversation, prompting, Projects, artifacts, skills, connectors, Research. 13 lessons, 1 quiz, 2.5 hr | £0 | Anyone new to Claude at work | Cowork, design/deck/document artifacts and Enterprise Search need a paid plan to try hands-on |
| AI Fluency: Framework and foundations | The 4D framework (Delegation, Description, Discernment, Diligence). 14 lessons, 1 quiz, 4 hr | £0 | Getting better judgement about when and how to use AI, whatever the tool | Mostly concepts. You need to apply them yourself |
| AI capabilities and limitations | What language models can and can't do: knowledge, working memory, context limits. 13 lessons, 1 quiz, 3.5 hr | £0 | Anyone who has been caught out by a confident wrong answer | No product walkthroughs |
| AI Fluency for small businesses | The 4D framework applied to research, customer data and operations. 8 lessons, 1 quiz, 3.5 hr | £0 | Owners and staff of small firms | Overlaps with the foundations course, so take one of the two |
| Introduction to Claude Cowork | Handing off longer tasks in Claude's desktop app. 14 lessons, 1 quiz, 2.5 hr | £0 | People who already use Claude daily | You need a paid plan to practise along |
| Building with the Claude API | Prompting, tool use, RAG, agents, MCP. 67 lessons, 8 quizzes, 9 hr | £0 | Developers building products | Long. API usage while you practise costs money |
Run this in Claude before you enrol.
You are a practical learning adviser for someone learning to use Claude at work.
My context:
- My role and the work I do most weeks: [ROLE_AND_TYPICAL_TASKS]
- How I use Claude today: [CURRENT_USE, e.g. "occasional chats", "daily with Projects", "never"]
- My Claude plan: [FREE / PRO / MAX / TEAM / ENTERPRISE]
- Time I can give this over the next two weeks: [HOURS]
Here is the list of courses I am choosing from, with lengths:
[PASTE_COURSE_NAMES_AND_LENGTHS_FROM_ACADEMY.CLAUDE.COM]
Steps:
1. If any of my context is missing or vague, ask me about it before recommending anything.
2. Rule out courses that need a plan I don't have in order to practise hands-on, and say why.
3. Recommend exactly one course to start with, and a possible second for later.
4. For the first course, list three real tasks from my own work that I could use to practise during it.
Output: a short recommendation (under 150 words), then the three tasks as a numbered list.
Constraints: recommend only courses that appear in the list I pasted. Do not invent course names, lesson titles or features.
Before you answer, check that your pick fits within my hours and my plan.
Fill in your role, current use, plan and hours, then paste the course list from the site.
Run this after each lesson, on a real piece of work.
You are a coach helping me apply a lesson I have just finished to my real work.
Lesson I finished: [COURSE_NAME] — [LESSON_TITLE]
My notes on what it taught (in my own words): [THREE_TO_FIVE_BULLET_NOTES]
A real task I have this week: [TASK_DESCRIPTION]
Steps:
1. If my notes are too thin to work from, ask me one or two questions about the lesson instead of guessing what it covered.
2. Show me how to apply the lesson's main idea to my task, as a draft prompt or a short plan I can run myself.
3. Name one way I could misapply this idea, and how I would notice.
Output: the draft prompt or plan in a code block, then two sentences on the misuse risk.
Constraints: use only what is in my notes. If you think the lesson probably said more, tell me to check it rather than filling the gap yourself.
Self-check before answering: does every suggestion trace back to something in my notes?
Fill in the course, lesson, your own notes and a real task.
| Problem | Fix (from the Academy FAQ) |
|---|---|
| "I finished every lesson but there's no badge" | There's a quiz you haven't passed. Check the course page, then retake it. |
| My company isn't showing, or it says I'm on a personal account | Sign out of claude.ai, sign back in with your company's SSO, then authorise Academy again. Progress already made on the other account stays there. |
| My Skilljar certificates are missing | Importing them only works when your Skilljar email matches your Claude account email, and the import is being rolled out gradually. Your Skilljar certificates are still valid where they were issued. |
| The wrong name is on my badge | Open the badge on your dashboard and choose Edit name. The verification link stays the same. |
New to Claude: Claude 101. You use Claude but don't trust its output: AI capabilities and limitations. You run a small firm: AI Fluency for small businesses. You're on a paid plan: Introduction to Claude Cowork. You write code: Claude Code 101 (12 lessons, 1.5 hr), then the API course.