ERW CommandPMO

AI CERTIFICATION TRAINING

Microsoft Azure AI Fundamentals — Exam AI-901

25 Sessions · 30 Minutes Per Day · Self-Paced · Prepares you for Microsoft Exam AI-901
Start whenever you are ready  ·  no cohort dates, no deadlines, work at your own pace
Coach Ritchie, the ERW AI assistant
Welcome

Hello — I am Coach Ritchie. I am the AI assistant for this course. Ritchie Wingo built me, and your work is marked against the rubric he published; anything that falls below the mark to continue, he reviews himself, because that is the point at which a person needs help rather than a score. I am here for the moments in between, when you are stuck at nine in the evening and there is nobody to ask.

Twenty-five sessions, thirty minutes a day, at whatever pace your life allows. No cohort dates, no deadlines to miss, nothing to fall behind on. You start when you are ready.

Every assignment comes back with real feedback — what you got right and why it was right, and where something is off, exactly where to look to fix it. You will never get back a bare score. Ask me anything as you work and I will help you think it through, but I will not hand you an assignment answer, and I shut myself off while you sit a quiz or an exam.

If you get stuck, say so early. That one habit is the difference between the people who finish this and the people who do not.

Coach RitchieERW AI Assistant · the course is taught by Ritchie Wingo, who reviews every assignment marked below the pass

Start here — choose your track before Day 1

Everything in this programme is hands-on. Before you write a line of code you need somewhere to run it, and there are two ways to get that. Pick one now. Same curriculum, same assignments, same certificate — the only difference is where your code runs.

The single question that decides it: can you put a payment card on an account? If yes, take Track A. If no — or you would rather not — take Track B, and lose nothing that is examined.

WHEN YOU ENROL

Pick your track, sign in with Google, enter your code. You can change track later.

SESSION 1

Cloud concepts. Nothing to install, nothing to set up. Just read and answer.

SESSION 2 — SETUP

Walks you through your chosen track, click by click. The only session where setup happens.

FROM SESSION 3

You are building. If Session 2 did not work, say so that day — do not push on quietly.

Enrol and choose my track →

Already enrolled? Open my progress page →

The two tracks in detail

TRACK A

Your own Azure account

For anyone who can put a card on an account.

What you need before Day 2
  • An email address you control
  • A payment card — for identity verification only
  • A phone that can receive an SMS code
  • About 20 minutes
What it costs
Nothing. The Azure free tier gives you $200 of credit for 30 days plus services that stay free. This course uses a small fraction of that. Microsoft will not charge the card unless you explicitly upgrade.
What you will set up on Day 2
  • A free Azure account
  • A resource group of your own
  • A Microsoft Foundry project inside it
  • Your first model deployment, with its endpoint and key
Why choose it
You finish with genuine hands-on Azure experience — the real portal, real resource groups, real role-based access control. That is a line on your CV that Track B cannot give you.
TRACK B

No card required

For anyone who cannot get a card, or would rather not give one.

What you need before Day 2
  • A Google account — free, no card, takes two minutes
  • Nothing else. No card, no phone verification, no billing details.
What it costs
Nothing, genuinely and permanently. There is no trial to expire and no credit to run out.
What you will set up on Day 2
  • A free Google AI Studio API key
  • Access to our simulated Foundry portal
  • Your Colab notebook, wired to a live model endpoint
Why choose it
You write exactly the same Python against a real, live AI service, and you learn the Foundry portal through a simulator built to mirror it. Every assignment, every assessment and the certificate are identical.
Said plainly: Track B teaches you everything the AI-901 exam tests, because the exam is a written paper about concepts. What it cannot give you is time inside the real Azure portal. If you can get a card, Track A is the better choice. If you cannot, Track B is a real path and not a lesser one — take it and start.

Side by side

 Track ATrack B
Payment cardRequired (not charged)Not required
Cost to you£0 / ₦0 on the free tier£0 / ₦0, permanently
Where your code runsMicrosoft Foundry on AzureGoogle AI Studio endpoint
Portal experienceThe real Azure portalOur simulator, built to mirror it
Setup time on Day 2About 20 minutesAbout 10 minutes
AssignmentsIdentical — all 25, same rubrics
Assessments and finalIdentical — same papers, same pass mark
CertificateIdentical — the certificate does not name your track
Can you switch later?Yes, at any point. Tell us and we will move you.

Plans

Every plan carries all 25 sessions and the same content. What changes is how much of it is marked, whether you can reach me directly, and whether it ends in a credential.

SELF-STUDY

$49

  • All 25 sessions
  • All 7 assessments, marked automatically
  • Track A or B
  • No written feedback
  • No questions to me, and no study assistant
  • No certificate
Buy Self-Study — $49 →
GRADED — MOST CHOOSE THIS

$129

  • Everything in Self-Study
  • All 25 assignments marked individually, each returned with a written letter
  • Three questions a day straight to me, plus Coach Ritchie, the study assistant, whenever you want it
  • The 60-question final, ten questions of which are built from your own mistakes
  • Certificate, reference letter and programme outline on completion
Buy Graded — $129 →
MENTORED

$299

  • Everything in Graded
  • Ten questions a day to me instead of three
  • Two 15-minute one-to-one sessions, subject to my availability in your timezone
  • Limited places, because they are my hours
Buy Mentored — $299 →
About the one-to-one sessions. They are offered, not guaranteed. I run this around client work and across several timezones, so I will do my best to find two slots that suit you — but if our hours never line up, they may not happen, and I would rather say that here than in an apology later. Everything else on the Mentored plan is unconditional.
Have a promo code? Enter it on the enrolment page and it sets your plan automatically. Paid plans work the same way: the buy button on a plan above takes you to Gumroad, which emails you a licence key, and you redeem that key on the enrolment page. Buying alone does not enrol you — your place is tied to the Google account you sign in with, so you have to come back and redeem the key.

How this works

1 · Learn

One module a day, thirty minutes. Open the week, work the session.

2 · Do

Every session ends in an assignment you build and submit.

3 · Get marked

Graded against a published rubric. A written letter comes back, usually within minutes.

4 · Finish

All 25 passed, then a 60-question final built partly from your own mistakes.

What happens when you submit

No mystery, and no waiting days for a mark. Here is the whole loop.

STEP 1You submit

Every session ends with a form. Answer it in your own words and send. Nothing to email, nothing to attach.

STEP 2It is marked

Against that session’s published rubric, criterion by criterion. The same rubric every time, for everybody.

STEP 3A letter comes back

Usually within minutes. Not a score — a letter naming what you got right, what you got wrong, and what to do next.

STEP 4It lands on your timeline

Your score joins your progress chart and the letter is saved to your account, so you can re-read it before the exam.

A real marked assignment

This is genuinely what comes back. Session 21, marked against its four criteria.

AI-901 — Session 21 — Graded Content Understanding: Documents and Forms 94 / 100
The rubric, criterion by criterion
CriterionAwarded
Ran a real document through a prebuilt analyzer, with evidence25 / 25
Three fields, values and confidence scores; identified the weakest and why30 / 30
Structured vs unstructured data; when custom beats prebuilt21 / 25
A real local application of document extraction18 / 20
What you did well
  • You ran the experiment nobody asked for. Re-submitting the same receipt and noticing the confidence scores moved between runs is independent scientific behaviour, and it is the best thing on the page.
  • Your least-confidence diagnosis is genuinely sophisticated — you identified competing monetary figures as the cause, not image quality. Most people at this stage say “the picture was blurry”.
  • Every figure you quote matches your screenshot. No inflation, no fabrication.
What to fix
  • Every confidence score came back low — 66.7%, 55.0%, 53.6% — and you reported that without asking why the whole extraction was weak. Look at which analyzer you pointed at which document, then re-run it against the other one and compare. Ten minutes.
  • You wrote the answer to Part 3 inside Part 4 and did not notice. Join them next time — connecting your own answers to each other is how an argument becomes an analysis.
Next step

Re-run the same document through the other analyzer and send me both sets of confidence scores side by side.

Nothing below 70 is ever sent as a bare grade. If your work does not clear the pass mark, it comes back as a letter telling you what is missing and what to do about it, reviewed by a human before it reaches you. You resubmit. There is no limit on resubmissions and no penalty for needing one — the point is that you end up understanding it, not that you got it right first time.

The 25 sessions

WEEK 1

Foundation

Open Week 1 →
  1. 1What the Cloud Actually Is — and Why AzureUpload session 1
  2. 2Setting Up Your Track: Access, Resource Groups and Least PrivilegeUpload session 2
  3. 3What AI Actually Is: The Landscape You Are EnteringUpload session 3
  4. 4Python From Zero: Your First Lines of CodeUpload session 4
  5. 5Python Part 2: Lists, Loops, Functions — and Talking to a ServiceUpload session 5
WEEK 2

AI Concepts & Responsible AI

Open Week 2 →
  1. 6How Generative AI Models Actually WorkUpload session 6
  2. 7Responsible AI I: Fairness, Reliability & SafetyUpload session 7
  3. 8Responsible AI II: Privacy, Inclusiveness, Transparency, AccountabilityUpload session 8
  4. 9Choosing the Right Model: Capabilities, Deployment & ParametersUpload session 9
  5. 10Consolidation: Domain 1 Drill + Python RefresherUpload session 10
WEEK 3

Foundry, Prompts & Agents

Open Week 3 →
  1. 11Inside Microsoft Foundry: Portal, Projects and Model CatalogUpload session 11
  2. 12Prompt Engineering: System Prompts vs User PromptsUpload session 12
  3. 13Deploy Your First Model and Interact With ItUpload session 13
  4. 14Build a Lightweight Chat Client Using the SDKUpload session 14
  5. 15Agents: Create and Test a Single-Agent SolutionUpload session 15
WEEK 4

Text, Speech & Vision

Open Week 4 →
  1. 16Text Analysis: Sentiment, Entities, Key Phrases, SummarisationUpload session 16
  2. 17Build a Lightweight Text-Analysis ApplicationUpload session 17
  3. 18Speech: Recognition, Synthesis and Spoken PromptsUpload session 18
  4. 19Computer Vision: Interpreting Images With a Multimodal ModelUpload session 19
  5. 20Image Generation: Creating Visual OutputsUpload session 20
WEEK 5

Extraction & Exam Prep

Open Week 5 →
  1. 21Azure Content Understanding: Documents and FormsUpload session 21
  2. 22Content Understanding: Images, Audio and VideoUpload session 22
  3. 23Build a Lightweight Information-Extraction ApplicationUpload session 23
  4. 24Full Syllabus Review + Practice AssessmentUpload session 24
  5. 25Exam Day Readiness: Final Drill, Booking, and What Comes NextUpload session 25

Assessments

Pop Quiz 1 — The Careful Reading Paper

20 questions. Sit this first.

Practice Exam 1

20 questions · after Week 2

Practice Exam 2

20 questions · after Week 3

Practice Exam 3

30 questions · after Week 4

Pop Quiz 2

20 questions · Week 5

Practice Exam 4

50 questions · Day 24

Practice Exam 5

50 questions · Day 24

Resources

Track B addenda

The no-card path for every hands-on session.

Simulated Foundry portal

Practise the portal without an Azure account.

90-second memory drill

The whole syllabus on one page. Read it daily from Week 3.

Official AI-901 exam page

Microsoft’s own study guide and booking.

House rules

From your instructor The Intelligent Barrel An Operating Doctrine for AI in Nigerian Oil and Gas — by Ritchie Wingo · intelligentbarrel.com Read more →