Success: Practical Thinking Skills (edX)

Positive Values and Powerful Skills for Your Success
This vibrant course consists of three parts and twelve units, with abundant case studies and examples. You will learn that the key to success of your work and personal life lies in the mastery of positive values and powerful problem-solving skills.

Positive Values from Three Great Masters
In Part A, you will be inspired by the insights of Aristotle, Kant and Mill. Their superb theories illustrate that a successful life consists in optimizing your potentials, acting on moral principles and contributing to social happiness respectively. As applications of their theories, two major case studies on job interviews and smart academic study are presented. In addition, interesting comic episodes are adopted to assist you to grasp these great masters’ otherwise abstract ideas.
Powerful Problem-Solving Skills
In Part B, you will study a bundle of effective problem-solving skills and decision-making strategies. They include five faces of creativity, ten methods of provocative operations and six thinking hats. To be successful in your work and life, these creative thinking skills are proven practically powerful and widely adopted by creative geniuses, innovative managers and corporate businesses around the world.
Success Stories and a Micro-Movie on Life and Death
In Part B, eye-opening success stories of Bruce Lee, Nick Vujicic, J. K. Rowling and Steve Jobs will heighten your personal motivation to strive for success. Their stories also show how positive values and practical thinking skills are applied. Furthermore, as a major case study, a micro-movie on life and death has been filmed specifically for this course, featuring local TV actors in Hong Kong. Guidance will be provided on how to apply problem-solving skills in such a testing situation.
Unique Creative Success
Part C is a brief conclusion. It points at the next step of upgrading your creative problem-solving skills in the light of your unique personal traits, potentials and talents.
A Timely Course in Thinking through the Challenge Posed by the Pandemic COVID-19
The wide applicability of the practical thinking skills of this course helps you creatively address different sorts of challenges, including the one brought on by the pandemic of COVID-19. Should doctors, for instance, provide medical treatment only to selected patients who are more likely to survive because of the shortage of resources? You will find reflections on the pros and cons of this sort of challenge in Part A. In addition, relevant problem-solving skills that bear on the challenge are also expounded in Part B.

What you'll learn

• Positive values that motivate you to succeed in work and life
• Powerful problem-solving skills that sharpen your competitive edge
• Success stories that empower you with visions for your own success in future
• Frontiers of knowledge from this exciting, interdisciplinary domain

Course Syllabus

Part1: Positive Values for Success in Work and Life
Introduction
Aristotle – Optimizing Potentials and Talents
Kant – Acting on Moral Principles
Mill – Contribution to Social Happiness
Case Study: Smart Study in Higher Education
Case Study: Success in a Job Interview
Part 2: Practical Thinking Skills
Introduction
Creative Problem-Solving Skills
Five Faces of Creativity
Ten Provocative Operations
Six Thinking Hats
Success Stories
Bruce Lee
Nick Vujicic
J. K. Rowling
Steve Jobs
Micro-Move
How to make a life-and-death decision
Part 3: Conclusion
What makes your life successful for you?