Who is this tutorial for?
The online tutorial is designed for any researchers who want to improve their critical thinking skills, regardless of the subject of their studies.
There is no cost to participate in this tutorial. It is offered as an open educational resource by INASP.
Why join this self-study tutorial?
This self-paced tutorial aims to support the development of your skills when assessing information. You will learn how to analyse and evaluate argumentative text and speech what will help you when conducting research. Critical thinking can also change the way you see the world in everyday life and supports you to make a difference as a responsible citizen. As the title of this tutorial suggests, it’s an introduction to critical thinking; it's meant as a starting point.
What will you learn?
On completion of this tutorial, you will have developed or improved your knowledge on and skills in:
- What critical thinking means and how to develop your questioning and reading skills (Unit 1)
- How to recognize and construct arguments (Unit 2)
- How to distinguish facts from opinions, and identify cause–effect relations and fallacies (Unit 3)
- How to recognize perspectives and biases, and reflect on your own perspectives and biases (Unit 4)
Length of the tutorial
This is a self-study tutorial which consists of four units. You can join any time and stay enrolled in the tutorial for as long as you would like. However, we recommend that you complete the tutorial within 4 to 5 weeks of joining. You should plan to spend about three hours per unit on reading, completing the activities, and reflecting.
Expected time commitment
About 12 hours to complete the entire tutorial
Learning resources and activities
Guided readings with embedded questions and reflective activities; quizzes to help you check your understanding; exploratory activities that involve watching videos and interpreting info-graphics. The tutorial provides you with guiding questions to support your learning journey; we recommend noting down your thoughts, insights and attainments in a learning diary.
Completion criteria
- Completing all readings and activities
- Passing the quizzes at the end of units 2 and 3
- Responding to the survey in unit 4
- Completing the feedback survey
A certificate will be generated automatically for you once you have met the completion criteria. You can download this certificate from the tutorial homepage.
Connectivity required
We recommend that you access the tutorial on a reasonably fast internet connection so that you can watch the videos embedded in the content. However, you can complete most of the activities and learn much from this tutorial even if you are not able to watch the videos.
Deadlines
This is a self-study, self-paced tutorial, so there are no deadlines. We suggest that you go through the units sequentially, as each unit builds upon the previous one.
Technical support
We are unable to offer technical support for this tutorial. All the information you need to complete the tutorial successfully can be found in the introductory resource at the start of the tutorial.
Is the tutorial compatible with mobile devices?
From a technical point of view, you may use a web browser on your mobile phone or tablet to access INASP Moodle. This website is responsive and it will automatically resize to fit the dimensions of your screen.
However, we strongly recommend that you use a computer instead of a mobile device to study on this tutorial, as there are several activities for which a computer would be most suitable.
Is there any advice on how to learn online?
This PDF document may be useful to help you prepare to learn online. It also contains answers to frequently asked questions.
Can the learning resources be reused or adapted?
Yes. The learning resources have been developed by INASP and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
**You can enrolment in this tutorial anytime.**
You should first be logged in to this site. Create an account for yourself on this site (if you don't have one) or log in with your existing account. Click the 'Log in' link on the top right hand corner to proceed.
After you've logged in with your account, head to the course enrolment page, in case you're not on that page already. You may want to bookmark the course enrolment page in your browser to get to it easily. You will see a button called 'Enrol me'. Click this button to enrol in the tutorial.