Introduction to Deep Learning provides a rigorous, concept-driven introduction to the models that power modern AI systems—from image recognition to large language models. You’ll build neural networks from first principles, understanding how forward passes, loss functions, and backpropagation enable learning. As the course progresses, you’ll train and regularize deep models, design convolutional networks for vision, model sequences with RNNs, LSTMs, and attention, and apply transformer-based architectures such as BERT, GPT, and Vision Transformers. You will also look at the latest trends in contrastive learning and CLIP. By combining mathematical foundations with practical application, this course equips you to understand, train, and use deep learning models with confidence.
This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Masters of Science in Computer Science (MS-CS), Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MS-AI), and Master of Science in Data Science (MS-DS) degrees offered on the Coursera platform. These fully accredited graduate degrees offer targeted courses, short 8-week sessions, and pay-as-you-go tuition. Admission is based on performance in three preliminary courses, not academic history. CU degrees on Coursera are ideal for recent graduates or working professionals. Learn more:
MS in Artificial Intelligence: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/ms-artificial-intelligence-boulder
MS in Computer Science: https://coursera.org/degrees/ms-computer-science-boulder
MS in Data Science: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-science-boulder
Status: Large Language Modeling
Large Language Modeling
Status: Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs)
Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs)
Intermediate·Course·18 hours
Featured reviews
5.0
·Reviewed Oct 16, 2026
Perhaps helped by the topic, but the course made multiple things click with me, and I feel my understanding of neural networks, attention, and transformers is much deeper now.
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Peter
5.0
·Reviewed Oct 17, 2026
Perhaps helped by the topic, but the course made multiple things click with me, and I feel my understanding of neural networks, attention, and transformers is much deeper now.
E
Egan
4.0
·Reviewed Mar 5, 2026
Very good videos and interesting lectures. Reasonable assignments and well-structured labs, autograders on labs are a little finicky and should be improved but that is expected with newly-minted courses, especially on such complex subjects. Well done, Dr. Acuna :)
R
Romel
3.0
·Reviewed Oct 11, 2026
I thought the lectures were good, but I didn't think the assignments lived up to the expectations.
Labs were fine for introducing Python libraries, and quizzes were okay for "getting the gist" of things. However, there's no real motivation for students to take a deep dive on their own and develop a more intimate understanding the same way students from traditional universities would.
I get, my critiques might be more a result of the MOOC format, but I think just adding a peer-reviewed capstone project on TOP of the existing assignments would've elevated my rating for this course and specialization to a 5/5 rating.
A
Alexandre
2.0
·Reviewed Jun 9, 2026
The labs require advanced programming skills. The videos should be better organized