Critical Thinking: An Online Course

By Shiran Juttla and Mila Steele, SAGE Publishing

What did we create?

The goal was to transition our dynamic author voice from print book to digital online course.

With Critical Thinking: An Online Course, we created an original online course that is inspired by the success of an established SAGE textbook. Tom Chatfield's book Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study has been well received by students and lecturers alike, and is quickly establishing itself as a bestseller. There is clearly an appetite to learn this a fundamental skill that students are recognising they need. With the course, we are responding to the opportunity to bring the subject to life for students no matter where they are, to explore teaching critical thinking online, and to provide students with an interactive online learning experience.

https://campus.sagepub.com/critical-thinking-course#critical-thinking-course/intro

How did we do it?

The conversation started between SAGE and Tom, and he was incredibly keen to develop Critical Thinking from print to online. Next we created a team for the project who then went out to find a fantastic eLearning company we could work with, who shared our vision and could help us create an engaging, fun, interactive online learning experience for thousands of students.

With everyone ready we scoped out what we wanted the course to teach, brainstormed how we could build it online and moved into developing the course. As we developed, we engaged with our audience and experts in online learning and had the course reviewed as it was being built, which allowed us to make changes to the course as we went along. After it was built, we ran a beta phase where we trialled the course in selected universities worldwide. After collecting the feedback and making further changes, we’re now ready to launch.

MORE IDEAS AND WHAT DID WE LEARN?

We learned a lot – and there’s more learning to come as we enter the next phase of the product.  One of our key takeaways so far is just how much expertise and people are needed to develop and launch a complex product like this, and the importance of having this expertise from the very start.

To view the online course, please see here: Critical Thinking: An Online Course .

Team

Mila Steele, Shiran Juttla and the rest of the SAGE Campus team

Jigsaw Learning