Developing Critical Thinking and Analytical Skills in an Information-Saturated World
The Toulouse campus of ICD Business School recently hosted a unique course entitled Decoding Reality, led by Florian Escoubes, researcher and lecturer at ICD Business School. This module addresses a growing need in business school education: enabling students to regain interpretative power in an environment shaped by information overload, media acceleration, and competing narratives.
A Course Aligned with Contemporary Challenges
The primary objective of the course is to provide students with intellectual tools to distinguish facts from narratives, analyse mechanisms of persuasion and influence, understand forms of symbolic domination, and grasp the increasing role of technology in shaping public opinion. The first session introduced 16 major thinkers, from Bourdieu to Debord, including Spinoza and Arendt, who together form a true intellectual compass for decoding reality.
An Innovative Teaching Approach
The course combines theory and practice through an active learning methodology. Students work in small groups, select one author, and present the core idea, its relevance for decoding reality, and concrete contemporary examples to their peers. This approach fosters strong engagement, critical thinking, and creativity, while ensuring a solid theoretical foundation. Reflecting on the course, Florian Escoubes, researcher and lecturer at ICD Business School, explains:
It was incredibly stimulating to design this course and to confirm what I already believed: when we give students stimulating authors and make them accessible, they love it. It creates some amusing moments where Guy Debord is illustrated through Hugo Décrypte and Descartes meets Pascal Pro… Magnificent.
Highly Engaged Students
The first session generated strong participation, meaningful discussions, and a very high level of engagement. Students quickly appropriated the authors’ ideas and delivered presentations combining theoretical rigour with insightful analysis of the contemporary world. The next two sessions will focus on methods for decoding reality—analysing cognitive biases, source credibility and framing effects—followed by practical tools such as reverse image search, metadata analysis, web archives, multi-source analysis and AI-based verification.
Conclusion
This course perfectly illustrates the pedagogical innovation promoted by ICD Business School: equipping students with the ability to think critically, analyse complexity and make informed decisions in an ever-changing world.
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