This is the final episode of a three-part series with author Clark Quinn, Ph.D., a recognized leader in learning technology strategy. Karen, Krista, and Clark discuss how L&D experts can advocate for learners and better mediate experiences to drive a greater culture of learning within innovative organizations.

Access the episode here.

This episode is the second part of a three-part series with Clark Quinn, Ph.D., an author and recognized leader in learning technology strategy. Karen, Krista, and Clark discuss using humor to engage learners, and how simple conversations can greatly benefit self-directed learning in the workplace.

Access the episode here.

Karen and Krista speak with Clark Quinn, Ph.D., an author and recognized leader in learning technology strategy, about the latest in cognitive science, and how to hook learners and make knowledge stick. This is the first part of a three-part series.

Listen to the episode here.

In this episode, Amy Parent and Irene Boland of Salience Learning continue their conversation with Bob Sottilare, Director of Learning Sciences at SoarTech, about practical ways to apply adaptive learning in almost every learning scenario. This is the last part of our three-part series.

Listen to the episode here.

In this episode, Amy Parent and Irene Boland of Salience Learning continue their conversation with Bob Sottilare, Director of Learning Sciences at SoarTech, about all things adaptive learning. This is part two of a three-part series.

Listen to the episode here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/fb0a3ea9

In this episode, Amy Parent and Irene Boland of Salience Learning take over to interview Bob Sottilare, Director of Learning Sciences at SoarTech. The company is a leader in developing intelligent systems that emulate human decision-making for military, government, and commercial applications.

Amy, Irene, and Bob discuss all things adaptive learning and how to create programs structured enough to keep learners motivated, and flexible enough to remain practical. This is part one of a three-part series.

Access the episode here: https://share.transistor.fm/e/7c67bb4e

By Karen Foster and Krista Gerhard

These days, you probably hear a lot about critical thinking and how the world needs more of it. It’s true.  Critical thinking skills are in great demand, but they are, on average, not really where they need to be. So, on March 17, we’ll be conducting a virtual session with the Philadelphia chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA): Using critical thinking to improve strategies and drive performance. We hope you’ll invest an hour and join us for the session. Our goals are to help you boost your own critical thinking skills and to provide some guidance on how to boost the skills of others.

Why are Critical Thinking Skills Important?

Critical thinking skills are growing increasingly important across a wide range of industries. However, the demand for them is especially great in biopharmaceuticals and healthcare. This is because of our industry’s high level of complexity, rapid advancement and the sheer amount of data that gets generated.

Overall, there are three primary reasons that strong critical thinking skills are needed now more than ever:

1. Cognitive overload
2. High-volume, high-speed decision-making
3. Human cognitive biases

Cognitive overload is a very real issue for both field- and office-based personnel in life science companies. The working environment involves sophisticated customer groups, substantial and ever-changing regulations, rapid market development, complex science and complicated business models. There is a lot of information to process on any given day. It can be a challenge to keep up with all of it and separate the useful stuff from the noise. Critical thinking is like a lifeboat that keeps us from drowning in a sea of information.

In our industry, we don’t just process information for the sake of processing information. We’re expected to do something with it. Life science professionals have to make a lot of decisions, often under serious time constraints. We need strong critical thinking skills to derive insights from information and make good decisions. 

Human cognitive biases also come into play. These biases, such as confirmation bias, overconfidence bias and “the curse of knowledge” can help us in some ways, acting as shortcuts to help us more quickly process information and make decisions. However, they can also hurt us, and we need to be aware of them. In times of cognitive overload, we tend to more easily fall prey to them, which can negatively affect decision-making. Critical thinking is the antidote to cognitive biases.

When it comes to developing critical thinking skills, it’s important to do so within the domain. In our industry, with all of its complexities, it’s much better to build critical thinking skills by leveraging real-world information from the domain, rather than simply learning critical thinking theory in a general sense.

What the Session Will Cover

As we mentioned above, the goals of our upcoming session are to help you boost your own critical thinking skills—within the healthcare domain—and to help you become a more effective “critical thinking coach” for others.  The session will cover these key things:

1. What is Critical Thinking? —We’ll define “critical thinking” so everyone will have a common understanding of what that term really means.
2. Why Critical Thinking Is Important—We’ll expand on what we’ve written here.
3. Critical Thinking Behaviors—There are clear behaviors and processes that people use when they engage in critical thinking. We’ll outline what those are and even dive into the “language” of critical thinking.
4. Strengthening Critical Thinking—Finally, we will share some exercises, tips and techniques that you can use to develop and strengthen critical thinking skills.

Be sure to join us online on Wednesday, March 17 at 12:00 noon EST. You can register here.

We hope to (virtually) see you then! 

In this episode, Karen and Krista define critical thinking and discuss why critical thinking skills are becoming more important in the healthcare and biopharmaceutical industries. They also discuss how critical thinking and strategic thinking are different, using real-world examples.

In the final part of our interview with Julie Dirksen, Karen, Krista, and Julie discuss what L&D professionals should take away from new research on learning within virtual environments, and how to best communicate with stakeholders to create effective programs.

In part 2 of our three-part series with Julie Dirksen, Karen, Krista, and Julie discuss how to provide learners with constructive feedback during complex scenarios that often lack immediate results in the form of rewards and consequences. How do we keep learners motivated when success seems far off in the future?

Learn more about Julie Dirksen: https://usablelearning.com