Claude for research and analysis

Do you regularly work with piles of articles, contracts or policy documents? With Claude you can analyse and compare hundreds of pages at once and have them cited with source references. In this course you get the most out of that capability using your own documents.

Description

In this one-day course you will learn how to use Claude for in-depth research and the analysis of large volumes of text. You work with Claude's long context, which allows you to process thousands of pages at once — think of academic articles, contracts, policy documents and reports.

You practise with Claude.ai and, optionally, Claude for desktop. The focus is on supplying documents in the right way, setting up Projects as a persistent research file and obtaining analyses with traceable source references and page numbers. You also look at strategies for minimising hallucinations and validating Claude's answers against the source.

In the second part, you go deeper into critical reasoning: spotting contradictions within a corpus, reconstructing arguments, mapping out literature and making technical texts accessible to non-experts. Working with confidential documents is also covered, including privacy, retention and audit trail. You bring along your own research question and documents, so that you apply what you learn directly to your own practice.

The course is given in the classroom or online, in groups of no more than eight participants. In-company delivery is available on request.

Topics

• Working with Claude's long context of up to 200,000 tokens
• Supplying documents correctly in PDF and markdown, with structure and metadata
• Having quotations and source references included with page numbers
• Multi-document analysis: comparing, summarising and detecting differences
• Setting up Projects as a persistent research file
• Minimising hallucinations in factual work
• Identifying contradictions within a corpus
• Reconstructing arguments: claim, evidence, assumptions and blind spots
• Literature folders: mapping a field from articles
• Making technical documents and jargon accessible through translation
• Quality control: validating answers against the source
• Confidential documents: privacy, retention and audit trail

Result

After this course, you use Claude in a targeted way for in-depth research and analysis of your own documents. You know how to supply large sets of texts in one go and get the most out of the long context.

Specifically, by the end you will be able to:

• Supplying documents correctly in PDF or markdown, with the right structure and metadata
• Having Claude cite sources with traceable references and page numbers
• Analysing and comparing several documents side by side and identifying the differences
• Setting up Projects as a persistent research file for a longer project
• Spotting contradictions within a corpus and accounting for them systematically
• Reconstructing arguments in terms of claim, evidence, assumptions and blind spots
• Mapping out a field from a set of articles
• Making technical texts accessible to non-experts
• Recognising hallucinations and validating answers against the source
• Working with confidential documents with an eye to privacy and retention

Target audience

This course is for anyone who regularly works with large volumes of text and wants to analyse them more deeply than an ordinary search allows. You have a higher education level of thinking (HBO or university) and are comfortable in a digital working environment. Prior knowledge of AI is not required.

The course is intended for:

• Researchers and academics who work with scientific articles
• Analysts who need to get to grips with reports and market information
• Lawyers who compare contracts, case law and case files
• Policy officers who work with policy documents and consultation papers
• Consultants who need to get up to speed in a client's domain quickly
• Journalists and editors who work through large sets of documents
• Knowledge workers who work with confidential or specialist documents

Teaching method

You follow this course day in the classroom or online, in a group of no more than 8 participants. The course is practical in approach: you work with Claude.ai and optionally with Claude for desktop, and practise with large document sets such as academic articles, contracts, policy documents and reports.

In the morning you delve into long-context and source work: how to supply documents correctly, have citations included with page numbers, carry out multi-document analyses and set up Projects as a persistent research file. The afternoon focuses on critical reasoning and synthesis, including spotting contradictions, reconstructing arguments and validating Claude's answers against the source.

You bring your own research question with a set of documents, so that you can get to work with your own material straight away. Afterwards you receive a digital workbook with the practice corpora, a methodology document with a validation checklist and a certificate of attendance.

Prior knowledge

You have a higher professional or university level of thinking and feel comfortable in a digital working environment. Prior knowledge of AI or Claude is not required. A Claude account is useful, though. A Pro subscription is preferable, as this allows you to work with the large contexts that are central to this course.

Comments

Bring along your own research question and a set of documents that you want to work with during the course. A Claude account (Pro recommended) is required in order to practise fully with the long context.

In-company

Would you like to organise this training for a whole group or several groups? This can be cost-effective. For example, we can tailor the content entirely to your organisation, and training a whole group is also cheaper.

Are you looking at large numbers of participants or a complete academy? That involves a great deal. Consider planning and communication, for example, or identifying and agreeing the objectives and content of the training. Or differences in level, feedback mechanisms and safeguarding. Fortunately, Learnit has extensive experience in this field (more than 25 years) and we are happy to help you through this process.

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Language

The training is given in Dutch as standard. The trainer has a good command of English. English-language course material can be used. With a minimum enrolment of 3 participants, the training can also be given entirely in English.