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Solving Personal Problems: Applying the Five-Step Model  HUM/115  Critical Thinking in Everyday Life

Solving Personal Problems: Applying the Five-Step Model
This assignment contains two parts. You must complete both parts before saving and submitting to the assignment link.

Part One: Describing the Five-Step Process
List the five steps in the model for problem solving from Chapter 6 of Critical Thinking in Everyday Life. Write a 25-50 word description of each. COMPLETE SENTENCES. Remember to correct cite and reference any source you use to complete this assignment.
Please note: Only the steps from Chapter 6 can be used for the left side of this worksheet

Step (provide name) Description (in your own words)
Step 1: Identify the problem Identifying the problem would be preparing a statement of the problem to help you later find information you may lack or find underlying causes of the main issue.
Step 2: Discover the causes of the problem While discovering the causes of the problem you are looking at the current situation rather then its history. At the beginning you should brainstorm and identify all the possible causes. Some examples of causes would be people, resources, environment, processes, procedures, and rules.
Step 3: Create options to solve the problem (creative thinking) While creating options to solve a problem you should brainstorm solutions. This would be collecting as many ideas as possible, and then screening then to find the best idea. It’s important at this time to not pass any judgment on the ideas, just write them down as you hear them.
Step 4: Evaluate the best options to solve the problem (critical thinking) When evaluating the best option to solve the problem many questions should be asked for the solution you plan to implement such as: which approach is most likely to solve the problem long term? Which approach is the most realistic? What is the extent of risk associated with each alternative? This is the process in problem solving and decision making are integrated.
Step 5: Act, monitor, and modify selected options if necessary In step five, you should be implementing the best alternative (this is your action plan). Then you can monitor the implementation of the plan by looking to see if you’re seeing what you would expect from the indicators. Lastly, you can then verify if the problem has been resolved or not. If not, you can then modify the solution to better accommodate the resolution you are looking for.