10 Critical Thinking Courses
We’ve prepared a list of critical thinking courses that will help you improve your reasoning and decision-making process. It includes lessons on understanding motivations and behaviors, developing strategic skills, solving problems, as well as handling challenges and situations with a logical and analytical approach.
1. Understanding Customer Motivations
Available in EdApp, the Understanding Customer Motivations serves as a critical thinking course by providing learners an in-depth understanding of customer psychology. It is an essential starting point for critical thinking as it allows the employees to observe and understand customers on a conceptual level so they can handle situations more effectively. This course kicks off with an introduction to customer psychology that outlines what customers buy and why they buy. It goes into detail about the concept of customer profiles and ways to recognize them. It also includes lessons on marketing strategies and techniques in customer retention.
EdApp uses mobile learning solutions for this course making it easily accessible for employees, especially service workers who don’t have immediate access to desktops and barely have enough time to spare for long training sessions.
Scope:
- Understanding customer psychology
- Human motivators
- Buying motivations
Cost: Free
Created by EdApp
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2. Embracing the Startup Mentality
EdApp also provides the Embracing the Startup Mentality course that will help employees develop startup brainstorming creative-thinking, decision-making, and problem solving skills. This critical thinking course discusses the importance of having a startup mindset and techniques in making decisions like a startup pro. It concludes with a guide on how to survive the hypergrowth phase. Insights from this course can be applied to step up in everyday work.
The microlearning approach to its lessons also makes key information more digestible which helps improve employees’ knowledge retention. Combined with gamification features, the lessons on this course are more fun and engaging for your learners. Through this, implementing critical thinking training becomes more convenient for you and equally effective for your employees.
Scope:
- Importance of having a start up mindset
- Making decisions like a startup pro
- Surviving the hypergrowth phase
Cost: Free
Created by EdApp
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3. Problem Solver
Problem Solver is another critical thinking course by EdApp that teaches learners and thinkers how to solve problems in a systematic, logical, rational, and data-driven approach. This course starts off by explaining what creative problem solving is and its importance. It further dives into the different principles and types of creative problem solving techniques to equip learners with strong foundational knowledge in overcoming different challenges and to find the root-cause of these complex problems. Then, it outlines the types of decision-making to prepare learners for any kind of situation.
With EdApp, encouraging and motivating your employees is made easy through its Achievements feature. Achievements are a unique way to celebrate your team’s progress with customizable banners and badges to overcome learning challenges and keep them engaged throughout their training.
Scope:
- Creative problem solving
- Principles of creative problem solving
- Types of creative problem solving
- Types of decision making
Cost: Free
Created by EdApp
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4. Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Skills
Available for free on edX, the Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Skills course is created to help individuals solve problems through creative solutions. This course demonstrates how to frame problems in a systematic way as well as forming different types of hypotheses. Lessons from this course will help learners to identify user needs, use design thinking to form ideas, and develop creative solutions. This course is designed for self-paced learning that can be completed in four weeks. Lessons are delivered through videos.
Scope:
- How to frame problems using a systematic approach
- Identifying user needs
- Using design thinking
Cost: Free
Created by edX
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5. How to Create, Spot, and Take Opportunities
The How to Create, Spot, and Take Opportunities course is another critical thinking course by EdApp which reinforces key concepts in understanding and seizing opportunities as a leader. The lessons include tactics to shake up the complacency of success, including the movement of managers and the introduction of consultants. By taking this short course, your learners will improve their attitude and approach when presented with opportunities.
Through EdApp’s powerful authoring tool, you can edit, rebrand, and deploy this course directly to your workers’ mobile device in just a few easy clicks.
Scope:
- Ways to shake up the complacency of success
- Taking advantage of opportunities
Cost: $149 USD
Created by EdApp
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6. Buyer Behavior and Analysis
Knowing your customers is half the battle, which is why it’s important to have an understanding of their purchasing behavior. In edX’s Buyer Behavior and Analysis course, learners will be introduced to the needs, wants, and motivations of a typical customer. It explores the consumer decision-making process and how you can leverage online technology to position your product or service. This course also discusses consumer ethics and identifies the ethical and unethical practices used to influence buyer behavior.
This is a self-paced course that takes 12 weeks to complete. While it’s free to take, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid version just to access graded assignments and exams.
Scope:
- Buyer behavior fundamentals
- Consumer decision-making
- Product positioning
- Consumer ethics & misbehavior
Cost: Free
Created by edX
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7. Advanced Negotiation
Negotiation is a core skill that is beneficial in almost any industry, but this course further teaches strategies for more advanced negotiators. Advanced Negotiation by EdApp will train your employees on the processes, implementation, information sharing, and correlations, which all are vital characteristics for successful negotiations. This course will help you become a better thinker, develop critical thinking and analytical skills, and improve your thinking process to make sound decisions and proposals during negotiations.
Scope:
- Stages of the negotiation process
- Sequencing strategies and tactics
- Sequencing strategies and tactics
- Information sharing at the bargaining table
Cost: Free
Created by EdApp
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8. Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage
Available in edX for free, Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage is a graduate-level program aimed to develop a competitive advantage for your organization through successful business strategies. This entrepreneurship course differentiates organization effectiveness and strategic positioning. Then, it recognizes external factors affecting a business to guide you in analyzing your industry and developing your organization’s strategic positioning. This course also provides key concepts for driving significant change within the organization by understanding topics such as perception, motivation, coordination challenges, etc. Lastly, it identifies conditions for creating new strategic opportunities. Through this course, your employees will have a deeper sense of the competition and establish a more strategic approach in the operations to help your business elevate your position in the industry.
Scope:
- Difference between organizational effectiveness and strategic positioning
- Understanding strategic positioning
- Maintaining a dynamic organization
- Creating new strategies and initiatives
Cost: Free
Created by edX
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9. Digital Marketing Strategy
Harvard has put together this course for those looking to create, design, and deploy a successful digital marketing strategy. Here, learners will get a glimpse of a customer’s end-to-end journey and discover how advancements in technology have reshaped consumer behavior. Digital marketing strategies discussed here include storytelling, social media, and search engine marketing. At the end of the course, learners will have the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned through a final project where they will be asked to create a digital marketing strategy and problem solving approach of their own. This online course follows a set schedule and takes 5 days to complete. Learners will also get a certificate of participation from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education.
Scope:
- Consumer behavior
- Digital transformation
- Marketing strategies
- Creating a digital strategy
Cost: $3,250 USD
Created by Harvard
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10. Business Developer
EdApp’s Business Developer course is offered to help your employees learn essential critical thinking and strategic thinking skills from the perspective of a business developer. This course covers how business developers create strong relationships with clients, negotiate deals, and take advantage of new business opportunities. Then, it provides ways to manage existing clients with meaningful relationships and insightful conversations. It also dives into techniques in winning new clients.
Scope:
- Developing strong relationships
- Negotiating deals
- Exploring Business Opportunities
- Maximizing business with existing clients
- Developing new clients
Cost: Free
Created by EdApp
Explore the courseImprove decision making with critical thinking courses
Critical thinking is a crucial skill that helps employees analyze situations, develop strategies, and solve problems in a rational way. An employee who lacks critical thinking skills has the tendency to handle complex problems and different challenges and situations based on intuition. This makes employees ineffective in developing logical solutions for the business and the customers. That's why it's important to develop critical thinking skills among your teams to ensure that they are equipped with the knowledge and skills in making decisions and in taking opportunities.