The study attempts to investigate the effect of creative thinking instructional strategy on university students' online problem-solving ability. Totally, 80 first-year nursing students participated in the experiment, divided into one experimental group and one control group using the quasi-experimental method. Over six weeks, the experimental group adopted a creative thinking instructional strategy, while the control group conducted a traditional pedagogy. The research findings show that the web-based problem-solving performance of the experimental group students was significantly superior to that of the control group students. Especially for the ”finding problems” and ”proposing ideas” aspects of the problem-solving portfolio and the ”critical thinking” and ”creative thinking” aspects of the thinking intelligence, students in the experimental group were significantly improved compared to that of students in the control group. Thus, the proposed strategy of the study can effectively foster university student's web-based problem-solving abilities.