Critical Thinking and Decision Making is a three-week online course for technical professionals that will explore what it means to think about thinking and empower you to solve problems both at work and in everyday life.
This course teaches the skills needed for critical thinking and decision-making. A critical thinker should be able to analyze solutions to a problem -- probing its strengths and weaknesses and comparing it to other alternatives. This process of deliberation leads to a selection of good alternatives as well as a clear understanding of why a certain choice was made.
The course is well-suited for managers intent on architecting successful, collaborative, and happy teams; technical professionals looking to advance their essential skills and improve the performance of their projects and processes; and individual contributors wanting to perform to their highest potential.
The courseware features video lectures, real-world case studies, interactive projects, and includes ungraded practice activities throughout to provide opportunities for learners to check their understanding. You will apply what you have learned by taking on the role of the key decision maker in various scenarios. Instructor- and TA-lead webinars provide a forum both for learners to pose course-related questions to experts and for the experts to share their own experience of current industry challenges and solutions.
In week one, you will be introduced to critical thinking and meta-cognition. Thinking about your thinking is critical to understanding problems and how you solve them. You will analyze alternative solutions critically and be able to identify types of evidence for or against alternative solutions.
In week two, you will be introduced to information literacy and research techniques to forming conclusions. You will also learn about a case study around Toyota and see real world applications to diagramming an argument. This will allow you to assess the strength of evidence and relate evidence to different social and technical factors.
In week three, you will be introduced to group decision making processes. These are structured processes that focus on convergence and gathering information. These utilize the Pugh Matrix and the Evaluation Matrix. You will also hear about how MIT’s D-Lab applies these matrixes into their research to develop and advance collaborative approaches and practical solutions to global poverty challenges.