Hi! I am Criss, or as some might call me, Little Miss Fun. I am not going to write to much about who I am and what I do because we have a website pretty up to date and you can find more about me here. Oh, oh, and I post a lot of cute stuff on our Instagram. Now, let’s get into the online course review.
Why critical thinking and problem solving?
First, I want to give you a quick behind the scenes and tell you how I decided to take this course at the beginning. So, Irina has her mind always active and seeking opportunities for development and why not challenge the members of the agency. And at one these moments of big inspiration I said ‘YES!’. The challenge was three months of social media and article writing for our social accounts and website and one online course from HubSpot Academy. As you might have guessed already, ‘Critical Thinking and Problem Solving in Today’s Changing Workplace Course’ stole my heart. 🫶🏻
If you are here reading this review for sure you know how important critical thinking and problem solving can be when dealing with decisions daily, working with a team and also with clients on projects with KPI’s and deadlines. You need to solve problems, sometimes fast, sometimes on the spot and have a critical overview on the deliverables.
I always seek different perspectives, because I think it makes me better. That was the main reason I chose this course. I wanted to see what a HubSpot professional’s perspective on these topics is and what insights I get from there and adopt them in my workflow and projects from Digitalee.
Let’s get into the online course review
Structure and what they are talking about
The course is structured in 5 main chapters, each chapter focusing on one big subject. For example there is Effective Problem Solving where they present the process and brainstorming as a solution for solving one problem. I can say the course is pretty straightforward and they are focused more on giving you lots of mechanisms to try, resources to study, practice books, personality tests and so on.
The little quizzes after each chapter are very easy and sometimes I even felt a little like in middle school because some of the questions were word by word from the course. Like, you did not really need to understand, you just needed to be present and focused and have a good memory. But even building a competitive exam is a lot of work. Afterall, this was a free course that had a lot of effort put into it.
The workbook is full of practical exercises that you can actually incorporate into some of the working sessions with the team or with the clients. I will list a couple that caught my attention and I plan on trying:
Brainstorming techniques:
- Role-storming: At a brainstorming session try swapping roles. The content creator tries to think from the strategy point of view, the media planner tries to see more of a content perspective and so on. This is a pretty niched technique because I think you really need to find a project that would have benefits from this approach. Maybe in a project that is very new for us and we are all kind of at the beginning with it.
- Round Robin: The team is in a circle. You settle a big question and swap post-its with ideas from one another. Everyone is adding to the idea of another and you build ideas in order to make them stronger. This idea seems very fun and effective because you always have a fresh eye on things and the creativity is spreading all over the table.
- Free writing: As simple as it sounds! Just take a piece of paper and for 2 minutes write anything that crosses your mind on a specific topic. Definitely going to try this one for the next campaign proposal.
SIFT – A solution for checking and managing false information on internet :
I find this very helpful because in social media and media in general you have a lot of occasions where you need to check the validity of the information that comes to you or to your client.
This method basically says ‘Hold your horses’ for a little and get some back-up before you decide to believe or take the information received seriously.
The steps are the following:
S- Stop
I- Investigate
F – Find better coverage
T – Trace claims quotes and media to the original content.
If you want to dig deeper on the subject read about it here.
Decision Tree Formula
This thing was very cool and they also teach you how to do it in Spreadsheets. Aaaaaaa!!!
The formula looks something like this:
[[Percentage of predicted success] x [potential amount of money earned]] + [[Percentage of predicted chance of failure] x [amount of money lost]] = Expected Value.
In a nutshell, this method of decision making helps you because it gives more clarity. You get an expected value. So, because you make some calculations, during the project you will know how to make smarter and more informed decisions. #LovingDigits.
You can learn more about the formula and have a very practical example with a media campaign in the workbook right here.
Main conclusions from my online course review
To sum up and answer a couple of questions.
Was it worth it? Yes, definitely.
Was it the most revolutionary critical thinking course? No.
It was like a 2 hour session with a good coach. It made you want to have more and learn more. Which I liked about it. I did not have the expectation to become the most big headed decision maker and problem solver after this course and neither should you.
I think that these courses are made for professionals and specialists all over the world with the objective to be connected at the current work environment, at the current state of the business field. They need to inspire, give perspective and maybe, why not, make you feel fulfilled because you use some of the techniques in there already.
I am about to take my Inbound Marketing certification soon. I will keep you posted with my conclusions for that course too.
Thank you for reading my online course review. Leave a comment if you took the course and tell me what insights caught your attention the most.
Byeeee!
Post A Comment