It is important for higher education institutions to produce Information Systems graduates who can think and solve problems effectively. This paper is a rich description of the first cycle in an action research project defined to investigate the effectiveness of using a specially developed unit in the first year of an Information Systems course in order to facilitate the enhancement of students’ critical thinking and reasoning skills. Introduced for the first time in Semester 2, 2003, the unit does not try to teach thinking and reasoning skills in isolation but shows how they can be applied within the field of Information Systems in a direct way. This paper describes the unit content together with qualitative comments depicting the students’ and the lecturers’ experiences with the unit and an analysis of and reflection on what worked and what did not. The skills covered in this unit should then be able to be applied in units offered elsewhere in the course.