Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Solving in a Business Analysis Course
Paul Serex and James D. Blocher
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
Volume 13: 2019, pp. 143-172; ABSTRACT
Teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills is difficult – we are trained to teach our discipline specific content, available from numerous texts so that we can accomplish it efficiently. However, our texts generally do not have skill-focused, unstructured, open-ended problems, but rather problems with specific answers or cases with fairly specific expectations. The challenge of a business school should be to not only teach the fundamental content of each discipline, but also to make sure our students have the skills to be good problem solvers when they face real-world business problems. To address this challenge, we describe how we constructed, and now deliver, an undergraduate course in data analysis and business modeling, with the specific goal of teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. Two very important parts of this course are i) the open ended operational problems which come from past real consulting engagements; and, ii) an instructor who understands these field problems and can demonstrate the critical thinking and problem solving skills needed to address them. The course is being delivered to eleven sections of 380 business school students this year, showing that such a course can be delivered to a wide audience.
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