7 Best Critical Thinking Courses Online To Expand Your Mind (2023)

Here are the best critical thinking courses to introduce you to new ways of thinking and organizing information for better results in daily life.

How good are your critical thinking skills?

When presented with new information, how well are you able to connect ideas and draw logical and reliable conclusions?

We all have critical thinking skills that come into play everyday, in one way or another. But...what if they were 10x better?

Here are the best critical thinking courses to help you evaluate information in a more confident and precise way.

These courses will take you out of your comfort zone, revealing both what you are currently doing well and what you could improve.

When you master the art of critical thinking, you'll gain greater clarity of mind in this complex and often confusing world.

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What are the Best Critical Thinking Courses Online?

Here are the best critical thinking courses to transform the way you absorb and process information:

1. Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking Course (Duke University)

This popular course by Duke University offers practical tools to improve your critical thinking and logical reasoning skills.

Through a number of activities, you'll learn to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments by other people - including politicians, used car salesmen, and teachers.

You'll also learn to construct effective arguments of your own in order to convince others and to help you decide what to believe or do.

By the end of the course, you'll be able to:

Understand and appreciate arguments that you and other people present

Determine whether or not an argument is deductively valid

Analyze and assess five common forms of inductive arguments

Recognize fallacies

Program Syllabus:

Course 1: Think Again I: How to Understand Arguments

Course 2: Think Again II: How to Reason Deductively

Course 3: Think Again III: How to Reason Inductively

Course 4: Think Again IV: How to Avoid Fallacies

Key course features:

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion.

100% online courses

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Flexible Schedule

Set and maintain flexible deadlines.

Beginner Level

No prior experience required.

Approx. 4 months to complete

Suggested 5 hours/week.

=> Enroll in the Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking course here.

2. Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age (University of Michigan)

To succeed in this information-rich world, you need more than general intelligence.

You also need the ability to collect, analyze and think about data, in order to apply these insights to everyday problems.

This online critical thinking course uses various concepts from statistics, scientific methodology, cognitive psychology and cost-benefit theory, to show you how to do so.

In the course, you'll discover the fascinating reasons behind issues such as:

Why it’s highly unlikely that, if your first meal in a new restaurant is excellent, you will find the next meal to be as good.

Why it is that a great deal of health information presented in the media is misinformation.

Why you might not have a disease even though you’ve tested positive for it.

Course Syllabus:

Week 1: Introduction, Statistics, The Law of Large Numbers

Week 2: Correlation, Experiments

Week 3: Prediction, Cognitive Biases

Week 4: Choosing and Deciding, Logic and Dialectical Reasoning, Conclusion

Key course features:

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion.

100% online

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Flexible deadlines

Reset deadlines in accordance with your schedule.

Beginner Level

Approx. 13 hours to complete.

=> Enroll in the Mindware Critical Thinking Course here.

3. Critical Thinking with Emotional Intelligence (Udemy)

Although thinking is considered separate from emotions, good critical thinkers actually use emotional intelligence to draw reasonable conclusions from a range of information sources.

This course explores the connection between critical thinking skills and emotional intelligence skills, showing you how these two skill sets can be combined in a powerful way in the workplace.

You will learn how to:

Describe how emotional intelligence and critical thinking work together

Differentiate between the two thinking systems and the impact that can have on emotional intelligence

Identify unconscious bias and thinking distortions and recognize how they influence your thinking

Determine ways that you can improve your critical thinking

Key course features:

2 hours on-demand video
5 articles
5 downloadable resources
Full lifetime access
Access on mobile and TV
Certificate of completion

This is not an introductory course on emotional intelligence. Rather, the course explores emotional intelligence on a deeper level, connecting it to the ways in which we think and reason.

The practical activities that are included will give you the understanding and capabilities to meet leadership requirements as markets and industries evolve over the next few years.

=> Enroll in the Critical Thinking & Emotional Intelligence course here.

4. Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Course (FullbridgeX)

What do you usually do when you encounter a problem?

This self-paced course by FullbridgeX will help you think critically and creatively to solve problems and design solutions.

You'll learn how to:

Frame problems using a systematic, repeatable process

Develop and test solutions using the 80/20 rule

Identify user needs and develop solutions to meet them

Use design thinking to generate ideas and discover creative solutions

Plan and execute primary and secondary research

Design and build effective surveys

Course Syllabus:

Section 0: Course Introduction

Section 1: Problem Solving

Section 2: Design Thinking

Section 3: Research Methods

Section 4: Final Assessment and Course Recap

Key course features:

Length: 3 weeks

Level: Introductory

Effort: 2-3 hours per week

Course type: Self-paced on your time

This course is part of a Professional Certificate

This critical thinking course will enhance your analytical problem-solving abilities, so you can become a better leader and teammate in professional environments.

=> Enroll in the Problem Solving and Critical Thinking course here.

5. Master Cognitive Biases and Improve Your Critical Thinking (Udemy)

Cognitive biases undermine critical thinking by making us vulnerable to faulty beliefs and bad decisions.

This Udemy course provides an engaging exploration of cognitive biases and their importance for critical thinking, to help learners mitigate the negative effects of such biases.

You will learn:

What cognitive biases are and why they're so important for critical thinking.

How ignoring cognitive biases can result in disastrous decisions, reduced performance and social injustice.

Why many businesses and industries are offering cognitive bias training to their managers and employees.

What "debiasing" is, and how to use several effective strategies to reduce the harmful effects of cognitive biases.

By the end of this course you'll be able to describe several common cognitive biases - such as confirmation bias, pattern-seeking, anchoring, and hindsight bias - so you can recognize and address any biases that may be holding you back.

Key course features:

2.5 hours on-demand video
1 article
Full lifetime access
Access on mobile and TV
Certificate of completion

=> Enroll in the Cognitive Biases and Critical Thinking course here.

6. Critical thinking: reasoned decision making (TecdeMonterreyX)

Making decisions in today's complex world requires the ability to dig deeper to understand the real issues behind problems.

To do this, we often need to challenge the assumptions on which we base our judgments - especially those regarding the world and its realities.

In this course on critical thinking by TecdeMonterreyX, students will discover the tendencies and assumptions on which their reflections are based, and the outcomes derived from such ways of thinking.

You will learn to:

Identify the theories that support critical thinking

Employ a methodology for the application of critical thinking

Relate the elements that make up the stages of critical thinking

Analyze the standards of critical thinking practice

Distinguish the vices of thought in decision making

Apply critical thinking to groups

Course Syllabus:

Section 1: Thinking according to our times

Section 2: Evaluating our modes of thought

Section 3: Elements and standards of critical thinking

Section 4: Articulating our decision making process

Key course features:

Length: 4 weeks

Level: Introductory

Effort: 5-8 hours per week

Course type: Self-paced on your time

Certificate available upon completion

The critical thinking techniques in this course will help you navigate decision making in various contexts, including those related to business strategies, the solution of problems in organizations, and social and ethical responsibility.

=> Enroll in the Critical Thinking and Reasoned Decisions course here.

7. Learning how to learn: Powerful mental tools for mastering tough subjects (McMaster University)

What if you could use critical thinking skills to transform the way you study and absorb new information?

This course by McMaster University is designed to help you do exactly that - by looking into invaluable learning methods used by experts in art, music, literature, math, science, and many other disciplines.

First, you'll discover how the brain uses two very different learning modes and how it encapsulates (“chunks”) information.

Then you'll dive into illusions of learning, memory techniques, tips on dealing with procrastination, and best practices shown by research to be most effective in helping you master tough subjects.

Course Syllabus:

Week 1: What is Learning?
Week 2: Chunking
Week 3: Procrastination and Memory
Week 4: Renaissance Learning and Unlocking Your Potential

Key course features:

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion.

100% online

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Flexible deadlines

Reset deadlines in accordance with your schedule.

Approx. 15 hours to complete

This course is highly recommended for learners of all stages: If you’re already an expert, you can still benefit from these counter-intuitive test-taking tips and insights that will help you make the best use of your time.

=> Enroll in the Learning How to Learn online course here.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for checking out this post on the best critical thinking courses online for those who love a good mental challenge.

As you invest into your personal development through exploring new modes of thinking and reasoning, you will experience a noticeable return-on-investment.

These courses on critical thinking will help you become better at evaluating your own work to determine ways to improve quality and efficiency.

But that's not all - these courses will also help you evaluate an argument's validity and its potential impact, so you can make sound decisions with the information that you receive from others.

Happy learning!