Transformers in Action: A Practical Approach to NLP and AI
Keep adding new skills with 10,000+ programs for $239 (usually $399). Save now.
Ask Coursera
Recommended experience
Recommended experience
What you'll learn
Master Transformer architectures and attention mechanisms driving modern NLP.
Fine-tune pretrained models using Hugging Face for real-world NLP tasks.
Build, evaluate, and deploy end-to-end NLP workflows with confidence.
Apply Transformers to tasks like summarization, translation, and sentiment.
Skills you'll gain
Tools you'll learn
Details to know
See how employees at top companies are mastering in-demand skills
There are 4 modules in this course
"This intermediate-level course takes you beyond AI theory into the practical world of Natural Language Processing (NLP) powered by Transformer architectures. You’ll trace the evolution of language models—from traditional statistical methods and recurrent networks to attention-based systems like BERT, GPT, and T5—through engaging demos and real-world case studies.
Across four modules, you’ll gain a deep understanding of how Transformers work, why they outperform previous models, and how to use them for NLP tasks such as classification, summarization, translation, and sentiment analysis. Through guided coding labs and hands-on exercises with Hugging Face tools, you’ll learn how to tokenize data, fine-tune pretrained models, evaluate results, and deploy applications efficiently. Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or AI enthusiast, this course bridges the gap between concept and implementation—helping you turn complex architectures into tangible, working AI systems. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Understand and explain how Transformer architectures process and generate human language. - Fine-tune and deploy pretrained models using Hugging Face tools and APIs. - Apply NLP techniques to real-world use cases such as summarization and classification. - Evaluate and interpret model performance using key metrics and visualizations. - Design and deliver an end-to-end NLP project, from training to deployment." Disclaimer: This is an independent educational resource created by Board Infinity for informational and educational purposes only. This course is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or officially associated with any company, organization, or certification body unless explicitly stated. The content provided is based on industry knowledge and best practices but does not constitute official training material for any specific employer or certification program. All company names, trademarks, service marks, and logos referenced are the property of their respective owners and are used solely for educational identification and comparison purposes.
Explore how Natural Language Processing evolved from rule-based and sequential models to attention-driven architectures. Learn tokenization, embeddings, and self-attention concepts through visual demos and hands-on mini-projects that build a strong foundation for understanding Transformers.
What's included
13 videos7 readings5 assignments1 discussion prompt1 ungraded lab2 plugins
13 videos•Total 59 minutes
- Introduction to the Course•3 minutes
- What Is NLP?•4 minutes
- From Text to Tokens•5 minutes
- Word Embeddings•6 minutes
- Sequential Thinking in RNNs•4 minutes
- LSTMs and GRUs•5 minutes
- The Sequential Bottleneck•4 minutes
- Why Do We Need Attention?•5 minutes
- Queries, Keys, and Values•5 minutes
- Self-Attention in Action•5 minutes
- Anatomy of a Transformer•5 minutes
- Encoder vs. Decoder•4 minutes
- Why Transformers Won•4 minutes
7 readings•Total 85 minutes
- Syllabus•5 minutes
- Glossary•10 minutes
- How Machines Understand Language•15 minutes
- Sequence Models Before Transformers•15 minutes
- The Rise of Attention Mechanisms•15 minutes
- Inside the Transformer Architecture•15 minutes
- Solution Breakdown & Explanation•10 minutes
5 assignments•Total 120 minutes
- Practice Quiz : How Machines Read Text•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz: Sequence Models Before Transformers•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : The Attention Idea•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Enter the Transformer•15 minutes
- Graded Quiz : Foundations of Transformers•60 minutes
1 discussion prompt•Total 10 minutes
- Meet and Greet•10 minutes
1 ungraded lab•Total 60 minutes
- Lab : Fundamentals of Tokenization & Embedding•60 minutes
2 plugins•Total 20 minutes
- Foundations of Transformers•15 minutes
- Quick Course Check-In•5 minutes
Dive into the anatomy of major Transformer families like BERT, GPT, and T5. Learn how different pretraining objectives — such as Masked Language Modeling and Causal Language Modeling — shape model capabilities, and practice running inference and fine-tuning tasks using Hugging Face Transformers.
What's included
12 videos5 readings5 assignments1 ungraded lab
12 videos•Total 54 minutes
- Architecture Families•4 minutes
- Pretraining Tasks•6 minutes
- Design Trade-offs•4 minutes
- Inside a Hugging Face Model•6 minutes
- Context and Hidden States•5 minutes
- Hands-On Inference•4 minutes
- What Is Fine-Tuning?•5 minutes
- Loss Functions and Regularization•5 minutes
- Fine-Tuning Demo•5 minutes
- Architecture Recap•2 minutes
- Pretraining Objective Review•5 minutes
- Choosing the Right Model•5 minutes
5 readings•Total 70 minutes
- Types of Transformer Models: Architectures and Pretraining Objectives•15 minutes
- Getting Under the Hood: Hugging Face Model Components and Inference•15 minutes
- Fine-Tuning Transformers: Workflow, Loss Functions, and Best Practices•15 minutes
- Solution Breakdown & Explanation•10 minutes
- Fine-Tuning Transformers: Workflow, Loss Functions, and Best Practices•15 minutes
5 assignments•Total 120 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Types of Transformer Models•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Working with Pretrained Models•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Fine-Tuning Basics•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz - Compare and Reflect•15 minutes
- Graded Quiz : Transformer Architectures and Pretraining•60 minutes
1 ungraded lab•Total 60 minutes
- Lab - Transformer Architectures and Pretraining•60 minutes
Build and train NLP models end-to-end using Hugging Face pipelines, Datasets, and the Trainer API. Explore dataset preparation, hyperparameter tuning, evaluation metrics, and model deployment to the Hugging Face Hub while learning best practices for debugging and performance monitoring.
What's included
12 videos4 readings5 assignments
12 videos•Total 48 minutes
- Exploring Pipelines•5 minutes
- Understanding Datasets•4 minutes
- Preparing Data for Training•5 minutes
- Trainer API Overview•4 minutes
- Evaluating Models•3 minutes
- Monitoring Training•4 minutes
- Common Training Issues•4 minutes
- Hyperparameter Tuning•4 minutes
- Debugging in Practice•4 minutes
- Versioning and Model Cards•3 minutes
- Publishing to Hugging Face Hub•4 minutes
- Inference APIs•4 minutes
4 readings•Total 60 minutes
- Hugging Face Pipelines and Datasets: Fast-Tracking NLP Development•15 minutes
- Training and Evaluating Transformers: Trainer API, Metrics, and Tracking•15 minutes
- Improving and Debugging Transformers: Training Challenges and Hyperparameter Tuning•15 minutes
- Sharing and Deploying Transformers: Model Cards, Hugging Face Hub, and Inference APIs•15 minutes
5 assignments•Total 120 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Pipelines and Datasets•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Model Training Workflow•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Debugging in Practice•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Share and Deploy•15 minutes
- Graded Quiz : Hugging Face Transformers in Action•60 minutes
Apply Transformer models to real-world NLP problems like summarization, question answering, and semantic similarity. Learn optimization techniques such as distillation and quantization, then design and present a capstone NLP project that integrates fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment workflows.
What's included
13 videos3 readings5 assignments
13 videos•Total 51 minutes
- Sentence Embeddings•5 minutes
- Measuring Similarity•4 minutes
- Visualizing Embeddings•5 minutes
- Summarization and Translation•4 minutes
- Question Answering and Classification•5 minutes
- Zero-Shot and Multi-Task Learning•4 minutes
- Model Compression•4 minutes
- Exporting Models•3 minutes
- Deployment Strategies•4 minutes
- Project Overview•4 minutes
- Building Your NLP Application•4 minutes
- Presenting and Reflecting•3 minutes
- Closure Video•3 minutes
3 readings•Total 45 minutes
- Semantic Similarity and Embeddings: Using SBERT, Cosine Search, and Visualizations•15 minutes
- Real-World NLP with Transformers: Summarization, QA, Translation, and Zero-Shot Classification•15 minutes
- Optimizing and Deploying Transformers: Compression, Export, and Inference Strategies•15 minutes
5 assignments•Total 120 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Visualizing Embeddings•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Real NLP Applications•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Optimization and Deployment•15 minutes
- Practice Quiz : Capstone Projects•15 minutes
- Graded Quiz : Applications and Extensions•60 minutes
Instructor
Offered by
Why people choose Coursera for their career
Frequently asked questions
Mid-level professionals, data scientists, and developers seeking hands-on experience with NLP and AI models.
Basic Python and familiarity with data science libraries like NumPy or pandas are recommended.
You’ll primarily use Hugging Face Transformers, Datasets, and Inference APIs, along with Jupyter and Colab.
More questions
Financial aid available,
