An effective way of helping students to develop their critical thinking skills is to have them work through case studies.  You can create case studies out of your own career experiences or by talking with other professionals in the field and see how they handled different situations or problems. You may want to create a file where you store examples and/or potential case study ideas for development later on.  You will be surprised at how quickly this file will fill up with topics that can be developed into case studies.

Make the case stuidy narrative brief and to the point.  Give adequate information concerning the background of the situation, outline the precise presenting problem and then ask  questions which will help the students  analyze and work through the problem.  One option for getting them into the case study is to give the case study to them to read and respond to before the next class meeting.  At the next classs meeting put the students into discussion groups where they talk about the solutions they came up with.  Then have each group report out on their collective answers.  This format helps the students  learn to work together, share ideas and look at different perspectives. 

Case studies are popular with students because they help the students to see both relevancy and application to what they are learning.  In addition, their motivation increases because their interest is peaked and they want to learn how the case study was resolved in real life.  These studies also help them to start projecting themselves into their professional roles.  The majority of their work will inovlve working through different situations and problem solving.  The more skill they have at problem solving the more confidence they will have in their abilities to be successful in their careers.