A non-credit course for Masters students, Ph.D. students, and post-doctoral fellows. This semester-long course will be offered every fall and winter term. The course provides a multidisciplinary and multicultural setting for students to develop the creative and critical thinking skills required for professional practice. 

GPS 984 focuses on foundational frameworks of thinking (often invisible to us) that are used for almost everything we do in our personal and professional lives. The key theme, creative and critical thinking involves a process of thinking about thinking in which identifying our assumptions and reflecting to enhance learning and thinking, are built into every session. Each session includes reflective activities to help ensure that the course content and activities remain grounded in the realities of work and life. 

By taking GPS 984 you will:

• Identify a number of professional skills you need to focus on as you develop your professional and personal goals.
• Become aware of your conceptual frameworks and develop thinking skills, to identify assumptions and biases in your and other’s thinking.
• Develop an appreciation of differences in the thinking in diverse disciplines and how to interact within multidisciplinary groups.
• Learn to appreciate the importance of group dynamics for problem solving and learning.
• Develop a personal understanding of how disciplinary excellence requires reflection on how you think, what you believe, and how you act

Course overview

GPS 984 provides a multicultural and multidisciplinary environment in which graduate students and post-doctoral fellows are expected to develop new and unique understandings and skills for their professional and personal lives. Meeting weekly with peers from disciplines across campus in face-to-face small groups, students collectively engage in problem solving of case studies to explore a wide range of professional issues and challenging questions. GPS 984 focuses on foundational frameworks of thinking (often invisible to us) that are used for almost everything we do in our personal and professional lives. The key theme, creative and critical thinking, involves a process of thinking about thinking in which identifying our assumptions and reflecting to enhance learning and thinking are integrated into each session. 

Through multidisciplinary and multicultural discussions students uncover their own knowledge frameworks and assumptions. They discover ways in which personality, human thinking, social contexts, cultural beliefs, and fields of study subtly but deeply shape our ways of knowing and acting, often without our awareness. Students develop mutual appreciation of each other’s’ vantage points that enrich their own academic fields, research, friendships, and future professional practice.

The course works to meet concerns expressed by Tri-Council Granting Agencies and the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies about the need to include a wide range of professional skills within Canadian graduate programs to enable graduate students to excel in responsibly engaging and leading our complex global communities into the future, to making a difference.

• Participate actively in class and through online discussion forums throughout the semester.  
• Come prepared to actively engage in simulations can case studies by reading and interacting with the online material before class. 
• Complete a short, focused reflection after each session.  
• Complete a summative reflection about your learning at the conclusion of the course. 

Registration is open prior to the start of each academic term and closes on the day that classes begin in each academic term. 

Graduate students should register in PAWS for GPS 984: Thinking Critically. Find the correct academic term, then search "GPS" scroll until you find GPS 984, then select either the synchronous online or in-person section that best fits your schedule. If you have any problems registering, contact career.services@usask.ca