Overview
In this one-day workshop participants will explore critical thinking skills which we define as:
The ability and intellectual commitment to use a set of cognitive skills, intellectual standards, and traits of mind to improve thinking and guide behavior.
Through distinct business cases participants will explore five critical skills and identify best practices associated with:
- Inference 推理
- Recognition of assumptions 假设再认
An assumption is something presupposed or taken for granted.
假设是事先设想好或想当然的事
- Deduction 推断
- Formal logic deduction形式逻辑推断
- Three stages deduction三段式推断
- Converse-negative proposition逆否命题
- Obviate personal prejudices 排除个人预期
- Interpretation 解释
- Evaluation of arguments论据评估
In making decisions about important questions, it is desirable to be able to distinguish between arguments that are weak, as far as the question at issue is concerned.
在对重要问题做决策时，我们必须能够辨别有关这一问题的充分论据和不充分的论据。
For an argument to be strong, it must be both important and directly related to the question.
充分论据必须既是重要的，也是与问题直接相关的
After exploring how to improve the quality of Critical thinking Participants will use the five step decision making process to apply their new skills to good decisions.
Program Outline
| Topic | Activity | Learning Outcome |
| Welcome, warm up, and ground rules | Logic Quiz Warm-Up | Becoming attentive to critical thinking |
| Inference | Case Study: Avoiding generalizations | Avoid biases that lack critical reasoning |
| Recognition of Assumptions | Case Study: The Mind Reader | Identifying and evaluating the effectiveness of workplace assumptions |
| Deduction | Case Study: Workplace Sherlock Holmes | Removing personal prejudice from assessing information and statements |
| Interpretation | Interpretation super quiz | Finding interpretations in key expressions |
| Evaluation of Arguments | Activity: The Great Debaters | Creating critical connections between influential ideas |
| The 5 Step Decision Making Process | Case Study: Evaluating Business Decisions | How to leverage critical thinking to make effective business and leadership decisions |
| Action Planning Sequence | What? So What? Now What? | Linking ideas to action critically |
