Critical thinking is one of the most important skills for academic and employment success but is rarely explicitly taught. Critical thinking skills are integral to many different academic tasks such as reading, writing and even listening to a lecture. The following links can be used as an introduction to critical thinking for the novice critical thinker or as a refresher and reference for the connoisseur of thinkers.

A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking
This is an in-depth and clearly stated 18-page introduction for beginning critical thinkers. It not only provides a step-by-step overview of critical thinking, it also has organized tables of barriers to critical thinking and ways to overcome them.

Argument Mapping Tutorials
Though a software company produced these tutorials, the discerning user can have confidence in using them because educational research has linked mapping with improved reasoning and critical thinking skills. These tutorials are geared for a more detailed understanding of arguments and their claims, premises, contentions and objections. They are well organized and current, but require some time and effort to process. This is a visual resource for those who are serious about developing a deeper understanding of argumentation and appreciate graphic organizers for representing information.

The Fallacy Files
This link boasts a vast index of fallacies from A to Z, which is maintained by an American professor of philosophy and logic. Each fallacy (flawed argument) is defined and a sample fallacious argument is given which is countered by sound logic. This is a useful quick reference for critical thinkers.