Women learning AI together — build fun and personalized projects in a supportive in person studio. By working together and participating thoughtfully in this technology, we will be able to build a better AI, and help to build AI better.
Authors: Jen Looper and the Her AI Studio contributors
Her AI Studio is a project-based, three-tier curriculum that takes students from critical first questions about AI all the way to assembling their own portable cyberdeck. Each tier builds on the last — software first, then hardware, then a final build you can take home.
The curriculum starts not with setup instructions, but with the question that matters most: Who built AI, who is it for, and why do you belong here? Students learn to think critically about AI systems — who benefits from them, where bias enters, and why skepticism is a skill, not a liability.
For students: Watch https://heraistudio.org for a notice about the ability to apply to join an in person cohort to learn in community and earn the hardware elements of your cyberdeck. Not part of an in person cohort? That's ok! We will offer our kits for purchase soon. Work through each lesson at your own pace. Better yet, find a friend and go through it together.
| Course | Focus | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Local AI, training data, responsible AI — all in software | Working with the My Room app with image classification and a local AI model |
| Intermediate | From software to device — boards, sensors, and hardware | Physical builds using microcontrollers wired to your software projects |
| Advanced | Assembling a cyberdeck | A portable, self-contained computing and AI studio to call your own |
| Capstone | Present and teach | A polished final build and the skills to explain it to others |
- Sketchnote
- Written lesson
- Separate facilitator notes
- Step-by-step project guides (for project-based weeks)
- Discussion prompts and activities
- Check your understanding questions
- Take-home challenge and supplemental reading
| Project Name | Concepts Taught | Learning Objectives | Linked Lesson | Sketchnote | Author |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Understanding AI: Who Built It, Who It's For, and Why You Belong Here | What is a model? Women in AI history. Bias as a mirror. Skepticism as a skill. | Describe how a language model learns · Name women who shaped AI · Identify where bias enters a system · Articulate why your perspective matters | Week 1 | ✅ | Jen Looper |
| Taking Control: Training Data and Local AI | Training data, data sovereignty, local vs. cloud AI, model guardrails | Explain cloud vs. local AI trade-offs · Install and run a local open-source model · Train a small custom image classifier with the My Room app | Week 2 | Jen Looper | |
| Software to Hardware | Getting used to the hardware | TBD | Week 3 | Jen Looper | |
| Hybrid Project Build: App TBD | Building an app using the board | TBD | Week 4 | Jen Looper | |
| Working Towards Offline: Creating a Fully Local Computer | TBD | TBD | Week 5 | Jen Looper | |
| My Cyberdeck — Final Build | TBD | TBD | Week 6 | Jen Looper |
This curriculum is facilitated, project-based, and community-minded. Every lesson is designed to run in a studio or classroom setting with a facilitator, but students can also work through it independently.
The progression is intentional: students begin by examining AI critically — as users and skeptics — before they ever write a line of code. By the end of the beginner course they have built a working local AI app. By the end of the advanced course, they have a cyberdeck: a small, portable, offline-capable computer they built themselves.
We believe the field of AI needs more voices, not fewer — and that young women who ask hard questions are exactly who should be building these systems.
