Free Online Course by Canvas: Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting

Canvas Network is offering a free online course on the theme of Integrating Critical Thinking Skills into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting (K-12/HE).

Course background:

This MOOC presents participants in the teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) community with a working definition of culture and tools for analyzing, understanding, and negotiating differences between cultures. The exploration of culture in an EFL setting requires helping students engage in authentic situations to develop the ability to navigate across a variety of cultures. Participants explore what critical thinking is and why it is necessary for the development of intercultural competence. Participants work through numerous examples of related activities and lesson plan elements, as well as ways of evaluating students' progress in these areas.

This course is provided by World Learning on behalf of the American English E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by FHI 360.

Course duration:

3-5 hrs/wk for 5 weeks.

This self-paced course will be open for 12 weeks. Learners may complete coursework at any time before the course end date. Which is August 24, 2026.

Target Audience: 

Adult non-native English speaking teachers of English and education professionals interested in professional development opportunities.

Course objectives:

By the end of this course learners will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of culture, intercultural competence, and what it means to be a "cultural being.
2. Apply concepts about cultural learning and their assessment options through the use of rubrics.
3. Determine "description" versus "interpretation" as it relates to cultural understanding, critical thinking, and professional development.
4. Understand how to implement lesson plans specifically for teaching culture and critical thinking.

About Canvas Network:

To promote OPENNESS, INNOVATION, and EXPERIMENTATION in education by providing educators access to professional development courses and programs that will help them thrive and succeed in their careers.

To Canvas Network ‘open’ means:

• Open entry and open access. Open entry for learners around the globe and continual access to course content after the course end date.
• Open content. Open licensing options and content sharing to Canvas Commons where other instructors reuse, revise, remix, retain, and redistribute content.
• Open platform and ecosystem. Open platform to integrate and innovate with third-party tools. 
• Open data. Open, de-identified Canvas Network data for researchers to analyze and synthesize.
• Platform neutrality. Your course. Your goals. Your way. We provide the platform for open innovation and experimentation.

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