Critical Thinking Skill Fundamentals

Critical Thinking Skill Fundamentals

Introduction

While being intelligent and passionate often results in work effectiveness and efficiency, that does not guarantee you to make a thoughtful and critical decision or solve a problem systematically. In times of crisis such as a pandemic or global recession, it is crucial that intense emotions and impulses do not cloud over critical thinking in the workplace.

Professionals should apply critical thinking in all aspects of workplace operations, to avoid any kind of costly and recurring mistakes. From recruitment to marketing to finance, all the organizational departments must emphasize practicing critical thinking for undertaking any workplace decisions. Critical thinkers bring creative solutions to the table to solve business problems. If you are able to objectively evaluate information to make informed decisions while facing disruptions, you will have a much better chance to impress an employer.

This course equips learners with problem-solving skills by developing the 5 core critical skills identified as pertinent to critical thinking by the Singaporean Government: Creative Thinking, Decision Making, Problem Solving, Sense-Making, and Transdisciplinary Thinking.

Organization

Genashtim

Outcome

Upon completion of the course, learners will be able to:

- Connect ideas or information to propose and test ideas, improvements, and solutions which challenge current assumptions or ways of working (creative thinking)
- Follow processes to make decisions that achieve intended goals using given information and guidelines (decision making)
- Identify problems and implement guidelines and procedures to solve problems and test solutions (problem-solving)
- Organize and interpret information to identify relationships and linkages (sensemaking)
- Explore concepts from outside one’s field of expertise to supplement one’s knowledge, proficiency, and work practices (transdisciplinary thinking)

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No	Topic	Topic Description
1	What is Critical Thinking and Why is it important?	In this topic, you will learn to describe what is critical thinking and why is it important. Critical thinking is clear, reasonable, reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do. It means asking probing questions like “How do we know?” or “Is this true in every case or just in this instance?” It involves being skeptical and challenging assumptions rather than simply memorizing facts or blindly accepting what you hear or read.
2	Ideation and Problem Identification Techniques	In this topic, you will learn how to define the problem, diagnose the situation so that your focus is on the problem, not just its symptoms. Helpful problem-solving techniques include using flowcharts to identify the expected steps of a process and cause-and-effect diagrams to define and analyze root causes.
3	Information Collection Tools	In this topic, you will learn how to collect data from 2 main sources: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings. Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses. Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.
4	Experimentation Techniques	In this topic, you will learn whether your ideas and solutions are able to solve the problem identified. One goal of methods is to facilitate the independent verification of scientific observations.
5	Knowledge Management	In this topic, you will learn the interdisciplinary process of creating, using, sharing, and maintaining an organization's information and knowledge.
6	Training Materials	In this topic, you will learn a chain of activities is often referred to as the sensemaking process. This process involves various tasks, phases by understanding, constructing new knowledge and mental processes, making decisions, and inferring conclusions.
7	Decision Making	In this topic, you will learn the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. You will also learn the risk mitigation strategies when making decisions.

Expert

Peter Brace

Dr. Brace is an adjunct faculty member at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. He teaches graduate and post-graduate courses in Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Critical thinking since 2013. He is psychological safety consultant for APAC and a CEO and Co-founder of Human Capital Realisation, Australia. He has broad and deep experience in customer relationship management, international consulting, and project management. He has worked in a wide range of industries and organisations, helping some of Australia’s largest companies with their strategic direction for customer service, as well as working across the Asia-Pacific region for prominent multinational organisations. His background assures clients of innovative and effective solutions to their most pressing and complex business problems.