Critical Thinking

What is Critical Thinking? I have heard this term in several classes such as Philosophy 194: Introduction to Critical Thinking, and Religious Studies 150: Old Testament/ Hebrew Bible Studies.  I understand Critical Thinking to mean that when you see, read, or hear something that you have the ability to remove all previous biases you may have had and form your own opinion on the subject, regardless of what anyone else has tried to convince you of.  Also I understand the term to mean that when someone is trying to convince you to agree with them, that you are able to differentiate between fact and opinion.  Criticalthinking.org defines critical thinking with the quote: "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." I understand from this source that if there was a particular process that a body would have to engage in to think critically, it would be evaluating information.  

I think that the connection between critical thinking and IM 204 Research Strategies is that to have good research strategies, when researching you must always be engaging in critical thinking.