Success: Practical Thinking Skills

An Award-Winning MOOC Expanded and Updated

Version 1.0 of this course received the prestigious prize as one of Top Ten Most Popular MOOCs in November 2017 awarded by Class Central, USA.

Version 2.1 scooped accolades as one of the Best Online Courses of all time and one of ten global finalists of EdX Prize , awarded by Class Central and edX respectively in 2020.

The current version (2.5) will continue to amaze you with further innovative pedagogies and updated course contents.

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.

Course Instructor

Currently Senior Teaching Fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Jack Chun has been Interim Director of former General Education Centre in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Subject Chief Examiner for HKEAA and Consultant on Thinking Skills for the HKSAR government, the commercial sectors such as SmarTone-Vodafone and professional groups, including medical doctors and C.E.O.'s. Dr Chun has also provided consultancy services to universities, including the Cornell-VinUniversity project in 2019. He has taught Creativity and Creative Thinking and Life and Death for over two decades. Apart from creating the current MOOC, he has also designed HKPolyU XSeries Program on Chinese Culture. International publishers of his writings include Oxford University Press, Routledge, McGraw-Hill, Springer and others.

Part1: Positive Values for Success in Work and Life

• Introduction
• Aristotle – Optimizing Personal Happiness
• 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?