Microsoft Copilot at Work
Signature Course No. 255 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Microsoft Copilot at Work course, in the AI at Work category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
What Copilot can see is what your organization has already let you see. Copilot works inside your permissions — it does not grant you new access, and it does not protect you from your own access. This course teaches the working model that follows from that one fact: ground the prompt in real material, prompt with context instead of wishes, and verify every output before it leaves your desk.
It starts with grounding. Every useful answer — and every strange one — is explained by what the assistant could reach when you asked: your files, your mail, your meetings, and anything shared with you, and nothing beyond. You will learn to name the source, complete the work order — job, material, audience, shape, and limits — and run the check in that order, every time: ground, prompt, verify.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Your Own Desk: Direct It, Check It, Ship It — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Friday Pack; then, Module 2 — The Team Standard: Ground It, Share It, Govern It — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Team Standard.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a checked Friday work pack for one full working week: the one-page briefing, the data answer note with its provenance, the deck outline, the reply set with its check record, and the meeting records published for correction; and your team's Copilot practice guide and rollout pack: designated sources, a twelve-pattern library, embedded checks, and confidentiality lines drawn at full strength.
The honesty standard is part of the course. Microsoft 365 Copilot changes — features are renamed, entry points move, plan eligibility shifts — so the course teaches the working model that survives interface changes, and every product-specific claim is framed as published at the time of writing, to be checked against the current product. A summary is exactly as confidential as the most confidential thing it summarizes, and that rule admits no exceptions.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Microsoft Copilot at Work is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with your horizon. Name a file your account cannot open and say what decides whether a colleague's assistant could summarize it; find the topic where your team keeps three versions of the truth; recall the fluent answer that turned out to be invented, and the check that would have told you. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Friday Pack for Module 1 and The Team Standard for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Ground, prompt, verify — in that order, every time. Every app-specific skill in this course is the same three moves wearing that app's clothes: ground the request in real material the assistant is allowed to see, prompt with enough context that the first output is worth your time, and verify the output against the source before anyone acts on it.
Module 1 builds the habits at your own desk. Grounding and the completed work order; drafting and summarizing in Word without surrendering either artifact; data answers in Excel asked, checked, and used with provenance; decks argued in claim titles; mail triaged by class with your hand on the send; meeting records your team can correct; and verification itself — source, sense, and stake.
Module 2 builds the team standard. Canonical sources designated and named; a library of twelve tested patterns; long documents, team Excel help, decision decks, shared mail, and channels held as the team's record; permissions and confidentiality at full strength; and the five-part standard that makes good practice the default.
And it holds its boundary throughout. The Microsoft 365 suite itself — documents, decks, mail, and files as crafts in their own right — is taught in its own neighboring course, and deep spreadsheet work in another. This course is the Copilot layer on top of the suite: what changes when a capable assistant sits inside the apps you already use.
What you will learn
- Work from the true model: what Copilot can see, how grounding works, and why your permissions define its reach
- Prompt with context — job, material, audience, and limits — so first outputs are worth editing instead of discarding
- Draft and summarize in Word, and ask and check data answers in Excel, without surrendering either artifact
- Build decks in PowerPoint and handle threads, replies, and meeting follow-up in Outlook and Teams with Copilot doing the assembly
- Verify every output before it leaves your desk, and handle permissions and confidentiality as your own responsibility
- Set the standard for a team: shared prompt patterns, checking habits, and ground rules for confidential work
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Microsoft Copilot at Work, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Friday Pack and The Team Standard
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for professionals who work beside the assistant
Managers and operations leads — whose weeks are documents, meetings, mail, and numbers, and who need the assistant to shorten the mechanical work without weakening the judgment work; and office professionals in a Microsoft 365 workplace who already use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams daily and want the Copilot layer taught as work, not as a feature tour.
Team leads setting team practice — who must decide how a whole team prompts, checks, shares, and handles confidential material with the assistant, not just how one person does.
Anyone who tried Copilot once, got a bland paragraph, and concluded it was oversold — the fault is usually in the prompt and the missing check, and both are fixable here. This course assumes you can already work in the five apps at ordinary working level, and an organization where Microsoft 365 Copilot is available to you.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with Grounding
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Microsoft Copilot at Work is Signature Course No. 255. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.