Applying the curiosity-confidence crank: Building critical thinking in higher education through a massive open online course

Active learning approaches and critical thinking (CT) are crucial in modern higher education systems, for example within US and UK, particularly in the post-digital era of online platforms and ubiquitous Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools; however there remains a gap in our understanding of whether and how to teach CT effectively in online settings. To evaluate potential pedagogic benefits of using active learning raise awareness of basic concepts in CT, we examined ( n = 344) from a 2-week Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) introducing basic concepts of CT, offered by a leading UK university via the FutureLearn platform. Thematic corpus analysis on participants’ comments generated on the MOOC platform at mid and end points of the MOOC explored whether this MOOC stimulated learners’ confidence in developing some basic awareness of CT and of their own CT capabilities. The results suggest that online CT awareness raising could be successful, if based on effective active learning principles, including good self-regulation, autonomy, willingness to offer peer-feedback and curiosity. We argue that CT capability is most effective through interdependence between learner confidence and curiosity. We propose the Curiosity-Confidence Crank framework to educators to help foster the awareness and development of critical thinking capabilities in active learning environments, as a key tool for supporting student success in a GenAI-ubiquitous world.