Microsoft Project Essentials
Signature Course No. 142 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
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 Project Essentials course, in the Leadership & Management 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.
You work on one consistent project throughout — the Kestrel House Office Fit-Out, a ten-task schedule model stated once, in full, early in the course: 29 working days, 444 hours of work, and a budget of $64,040, with its critical path, its float, and every later variance figure computed from that same model, so you can check any number in the course by hand.
This is the course for project schedulers and planners, project and team leads who receive schedules as often as they make them, coordinators and administrators moving into project roles, and anyone handed "the Project file" and expected to keep it true.
It works in two movements: first, Module 1 — Building a Schedule That Holds Together — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Checked Model; then, Module 2 — Running, Resourcing, and Recovering the Plan — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with Live, Slipping, Recovered.
You finish by proving the whole course — in The Checked Model and in Live, Slipping, Recovered.
You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies, hands-free. 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. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a complete, health-checked schedule model with a sponsor-ready model note, and a full live-running pack for a slipping project: the update posted, the position priced, the recovery chosen and defended, and a reporting pack each reader can act on.
Microsoft and Microsoft Project are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. This course is independent educational material, not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.
This is the one hundred and forty-second course in 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 the schedule model itself, not with the chart. A plan is a set of claims — tasks, durations, links, and calendars — and every date in it is a conclusion drawn from those claims. 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 model you only think you have built.
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 Checked Model for Module 1 and Live, Slipping, Recovered for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Every project lives twice: once in the world, where people do work in sequence under real limits, and once in the plan, where that work is written down. When the written version is a list of dates typed into a grid, the two lives drift apart within a fortnight — because a typed date knows nothing about the task before it, the calendar under it, or the person assigned to it, and it does not move when they do.
This course teaches the other kind of plan: a schedule model in Microsoft Project, in which tasks are linked by the logic that actually joins them, durations sit on calendars that reflect real working time, resources carry real capacity, and the finish date is computed — so that when one fact changes, every date that honestly depends on it changes too, and every date that does not depend on it provably stays put.
You will build such a model from a blank file; read its critical path and float the way an engineer reads a load diagram; put people, kit, and money onto the tasks without asking any person to be in two places at once; freeze the promise as a baseline; track real progress against it without flattering the figures; read variance and earned value in the tool's own tables; show the right slice of the plan to each audience;
and, when the plan slips — as plans do — recover it by changing the model on purpose, at a stated price, instead of dragging bars until the picture looks calm again.
What you will learn
- Build a linked schedule model — tasks, durations, dependencies, and calendars — whose dates are computed, not typed
- Read the forward and backward pass, float, and the critical path in the tool, and say what each date depends on
- Assign resources, resolve over-allocation, and build the project's cost from its work
- Set and keep a baseline, then track actual progress against it honestly
- Read variance and earned value in the tool and state whether the project is late, over budget, or both
- Present the plan through views, tables, and reports fitted to each audience
- Recover a slipping plan inside the model — at a stated cost in money, risk, or scope — and re-forecast the finish
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Microsoft Project Essentials, 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 Checked Model and Live, Slipping, Recovered
- 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 the scheduler whose dates other people plan around
Microsoft Project Essentials is for project schedulers and planners who build and maintain the plan others work to, project and team leads who need to tell a computed date from a typed wish at a glance, and coordinators and administrators moving into project roles who already keep the lists, chase the updates, and book the rooms —
and for anyone handed "the Project file" in a business, a practice, a facilities team, a fit-out, or a launch, and expected to keep it true.
This course assumes you can open the application and find your way around a spreadsheet-style grid. It assumes no prior scheduling theory. The arithmetic is addition, subtraction, and one careful multiplication at a time — the discipline is in knowing which numbers the tool is allowed to compute for you, and which judgments it must never make in your place.
If you already work an area well, the test-out route in each concept lets you prove it and move faster — the bar does not drop; the route just gets shorter.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Checked Model
$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.
More Signature Courses are coming
Microsoft Project Essentials is Signature Course No. 142. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.