Hey, it's Cindy 🌱 Here are all five PMI courses from the reel, with the direct link, the price, the run time, the PDU value and what each one actually covers.
btw the waitlist for AI System Club is now open! If you're keen on using AI to automate your content, video editing, job search, business or build AI agents, feel free to sign up (only if you want to hehe). Ps. the waitlist gets first dibs:)
the short version
The whole thing in 5 steps
📘 Start with Generative AI Overview. One hour, five PDUs, and it ends in a badge. It is the biggest PDU return per hour on the whole list, so there is no reason to start anywhere else.
💬 Then do Talking to AI. Another hour, three more PDUs, and it is the prompting course. It teaches you to get a usable answer out of a model instead of a paragraph of hedging.
🔍 Then the free intro to PMI-CPMAI. One more hour, three more PDUs. This is a preview of PMI's paid AI certification, so it is also how you work out whether that certification is worth your money.
🧩 Now the long one, Seven AI Project Patterns. Five hours, five PDUs. Of the five, this is the one most likely to change how you scope an actual project.
🛠 Finish with Practical Application of Generative AI. Five hours, five PDUs, and PMI describes it as roughly five hours of hands-on practice. Do it last so you are applying everything the other four taught you.
You do not have to do all five. The first three are one hour each and add up to 11 PDUs, which is a genuinely good evening. The last two are the ones that need a weekend.
why 21 matters
What 21 PDUs actually buys you
A PDU is a one-hour block of professional development that PMI counts towards keeping your certification current. If you hold a PMP, you need 60 PDUs in every three-year cycle, and at least 35 of those have to be Education PDUs rather than giving-back activity (PMI's renewal requirements).
These five courses are all Education PDUs. So 21 of them covers 60% of the education half of a full PMP cycle, in about 13 hours, for nothing. If you hold a CAPM instead, the whole cycle is 15 PDUs with a minimum of 9 Education, so the first three one-hour courses on this list already overshoot it.
Every one of these course pages has a "PDU Breakdown" section further down, splitting the total across the three PMI Talent Triangle areas: Ways of Working, Power Skills and Business Acumen. That matters because your renewal has a minimum in each area, so it is worth checking which area a course credits before you assume it fills the gap you actually have.
a word on the price
Free here really does mean free
PMI uses two different labels on its course catalogue, and they are not the same thing. Courses tagged Free are open to everyone. Courses tagged Free for Members need a paid PMI membership. All five courses in this guide carry the plain Free tag and show Price USD $0 on their own product page. You can see both labels sitting next to each other on PMI's ways-to-earn-PDUs page, where two of these courses appear tagged Free right beside a different AI course tagged Free for Members.
You do still need a PMI account to enrol, which is free to create. And one honest note: PMI charges a renewal fee at the end of your cycle regardless of how you earned the PDUs, so this list makes the education free, not the certification.
What it is. PMI's entry point. In their own words, you "gain a basic understanding of Generative AI (GenAI) in project management" and "explore different tools and its applications for enhanced project outcomes". It is the vocabulary course, and it exists so the other four do not have to keep stopping to define things.
What it actually covers. What generative AI is as a category, which tools do what, and where a project manager would realistically use one. It is not a technical course and there is nothing to install.
What you walk away with. Five PDUs and a Credly digital badge issued by PMI, which you can add to the Licenses and certifications section of LinkedIn. The badge criteria read "Successful completion of the Generative AI for Project Managers eLearning course" plus passing the assessment.
Five PDUs for one hour is the best exchange rate on this list by a wide margin. Even if you do nothing else here, do this one.
2. Talking to AI: Prompt Engineering for Project Managers
What it is. The prompting course, aimed squarely at project work rather than at developers. PMI's description is about getting "the knowledge and skills to talk with Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT effectively" and generating "the most valuable, customized, and insightful responses".
What it actually covers. How to structure a request so you get a specific answer back, and how to iterate on a weak one. The project-management framing is the useful part, because the examples are status reports, risk summaries and stakeholder comms rather than generic writing tasks.
What you walk away with. Three PDUs and a Credly badge, earned by completing the course and passing the assessment.
If you have already done a general prompting course elsewhere, the content here will feel familiar. Do it anyway for the PDUs, and treat it as an hour of revision rather than an hour of learning. That is an honest use of it.
What it is. An introduction to CPMAI, the methodology PMI built for running AI projects specifically. PMI's page describes it as "a preview of the PMI-CPMAI™ Exam Prep Course & Certification", which is the honest framing and worth repeating: this is the free taster, not the certification.
What it actually covers. Three things, in PMI's own outline: the common reasons AI projects fail, an overview of the CPMAI methodology and its six phases, and how those phases head off the failures described at the start. The failure section is the genuinely useful part, because it names causes like unclear objectives and data quality rather than technology problems.
What you walk away with. Three PDUs, and a clear read on whether PMI's paid CPMAI certification is something you want. PMI does not publish a Credly badge for this one, so do not expect one.
Treat this as a free look at a paid product, and that is a good reason to do it rather than a reason to skip it. An hour is a cheap way to find out that a certification is not for you.
What it is. The scoping course. PMI describes it as "a clear, practical pattern-based approach to plan, assess and navigate AI projects with confidence". The seven patterns are a way of recognising which shape of AI problem you are actually looking at before you commit a budget to it.
What it actually covers. Assessing AI fit and clarifying the problem, which is the step most AI projects skip. If you have ever sat in a meeting where someone wanted to "add AI" to something without being able to say what it would do, this course is the vocabulary for pushing back on that productively.
What you walk away with. Five PDUs. PMI does not publish a Credly badge for this one either, so it is PDUs and knowledge rather than something to display.
This is the one I would pick if you only have a weekend and you want it to change how you actually work. The badge-bearing courses are better for your profile, but this one is better for your projects.
5. Practical Application of Generative AI for Project Managers
What it is. The hands-on one, and the only course on this list PMI tags "Free for Everyone" on its AI hub page. It is about combining tools rather than learning one.
What it actually covers. PMI's description: "Strategically combine AI tools, understand prompting techniques, and implement automation into workflows for improved outcomes. This course includes approximately five hours' worth of hands-on practice." The automation piece is what separates it from course one, which stops at understanding.
What you walk away with. Five PDUs and a Credly badge, earned by completing the course and passing the assessment.
Do this one last. It assumes the vocabulary from course one and the prompting from course two, and it is much less frustrating when you already have both.
the maths
How the 21 breaks down
Three courses at one hour, two at five hours, five prices at zero.
The afternoon Courses 1, 2 and 3. Three hours, 11 PDUs, two Credly badges, $0. This is the version most people will actually finish.
The full set All five. About 13 hours, 21 PDUs, three Credly badges, $0. That is 60% of the education requirement for a PMP renewal cycle.
don't skip this part
How to actually claim the PDUs
Finishing a course is not the same as having the PDUs counted. They have to be logged. PMI's own renewal steps are: earn the PDUs, enter them in the Continuing Certification Requirements System, then pay the renewal fee when your cycle ends.
🔐 Finish the assessment, not just the videos. On the courses that issue a badge, the badge criteria say completion plus passing the assessment. Clicking through the lessons without sitting the assessment leaves you with neither the badge nor a clean record of completion.
📝 Log in to CCRS. Go to ccrs.pmi.org with the same PMI account you used to enrol. This is the system PMI names in its renewal instructions, and it is where every PDU you ever claim lives.
📚 Claim it as an Education PDU. All five of these fall under Education, specifically the online-course category. PMI's ways-to-earn page lists PMI online courses as an Education route explicitly, so you are not making a judgment call here.
🔺 Check your Talent Triangle balance as you go. Your renewal needs a minimum number of PDUs in each of Ways of Working, Power Skills and Business Acumen. Each course page shows its own split under "PDU Breakdown", so read that before you decide which of the five to do next. If you are short in one specific area, let that decide your order rather than the run time.
🗂 Keep the completion record. Save the certificate or badge URL for each course somewhere you will find it in three years. PMI can audit a claim, and a Credly badge with a public verification link is the easiest possible evidence.
after the courses
Making them count
📌 Add the three badges properly. LinkedIn's Licenses and certifications section, using each Credly badge's verification URL rather than a screenshot. Three verifiable PMI badges reads very differently from three lines of text.
🗣 Be precise about what each one is. These are PMI courses that carry PDUs, and three of them issue badges. None of them is the PMI-CPMAI certification. Saying that accurately costs you nothing and it is exactly the kind of precision that reads as competence in an interview.
🔨 Use the Seven Patterns course on a real project. Take something already in your pipeline that somebody has suggested "adding AI" to, and run it through the patterns to say out loud which shape it is, or that it is none of them. That one meeting is worth more than the badges.
the waitlist is now open
AI System Club is launching soon
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btw this list gets first dibs the moment doors open :)