Intermediate Free Course 04 of 90

Fine-Tuning Large
Language Models

Take a pre-trained model and teach it your domain, your tone, and your task. This course goes from the theory of why fine-tuning works all the way to running LoRA on a real dataset.

Start Module 1 → Talk to Arjun
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Is this course for me?
This IS for you if...This is NOT for you if...
You know Python basics and want to customize an LLM for your use caseYou have never written a Python function (start with AI Basics first)
You want to understand LoRA, RLHF, and instruction tuning at a deep levelYou only want a no-code chatbot builder
You work in a domain where a generic model makes mistakes (legal, medical, finance)You are satisfied with prompt engineering results and don't need model customization
You want to build a specialized AI model as a product or internal toolYou expect to train from scratch — this course focuses on fine-tuning, not pre-training
Before this course You should be comfortable with: Python functions and loops, what a neural network layer does, and what a language model is. Complete How LLMs Work and AI Agents first if you haven't already.
What you will learn
Modules
01

Why Fine-Tune? When Prompts Are Not Enough

Understand the gap between what a pre-trained model knows and what your use case demands. Learn when fine-tuning is the right tool and when it isn't.

Read time: 14 min
Done
02

Dataset Preparation and Formatting

Build a training set the model can actually learn from. Cover data quality filters, instruction-response formatting, and the most common dataset mistakes.

Read time: 15 min
Done
03

LoRA and QLoRA: Fine-Tuning Without a Supercomputer

Learn how low-rank adaptation works mathematically, why it cuts memory use dramatically, and how to configure LoRA rank and alpha for your task.

Read time: 16 min
Done
04

Instruction Tuning and RLHF

Teach the model to follow instructions, not just predict text. Cover supervised fine-tuning on instructions, reward models, and the PPO training loop used in RLHF.

Read time: 17 min
Done
05

Evaluating a Fine-Tuned Model

Measure whether fine-tuning actually helped. Learn perplexity, task-specific benchmarks, human eval, and how to detect catastrophic forgetting.

Read time: 14 min
Done
06

Deploying Your Fine-Tuned Model

Merge LoRA weights, quantize for speed, and serve via FastAPI or Hugging Face Inference Endpoints. Make the model accessible as a real API.

Read time: 15 min
Done

Capstone: Fine-Tune a Model on Your Own Data

Apply everything to a real challenge. Fine-tune a small open-source model on a custom dataset, evaluate it, and earn your certificate.

Module time: 30 min
Done
Related courses
Supporting blog series
What is fine-tuning an LLM? → How to fine-tune an LLM step by step → Fine-tuning for beginners: no PhD required → Fine-tuning examples and use cases → Fine-tuning vs RAG: which one should you use? → Fine-tuning LLMs for business applications →

Ready to customize your first model?

90 minutes of focused learning. A fine-tuned model at the end. Free.

Start Module 1 →