8 Ways To Engage the Right Brain Learner in Your Online Courses

The left side of our brain is the logical, analytical and  strategic side of us; whereas the right side of our brain is the visual, creative and conceptual side of us.  Most people fall more into one side than another the majority of the time, but we ALL have both sides within us!

This means that course creators must consciously design training in a way that will ensure both processing styles are met if they want their course to be as engaging as possible for all of their learners.

Here are 8 considerations and methods that you can use to engage the right brain learner in your online and offline training courses:

1. Encourage thinking beyond the scope of the curriculum

The right-brained part of us is the part of us that likes to think ‘outside of the box’ and consider how the learning applies to our lives beyond the scope of the course curriculum. For example,  if your course is about ‘how to farm honey’,  your left brain learners will be considering each and every small, broken down step for producing the perfect honey;  whereas your right brain learners would be more likely to be thinking about how they can cook with honey, flavour their tea with honey, or produce skincare products with honey.  

Instead of focussing in on the constituent parts of the development process, the right brain learner will prefer to view the completed end result in their mind’s eye – and importantly for what and why it was being farmed for in the first place.

2.  Encourage innovation

Right brain learners like to synthesize knowledge and create new ideas from two entirely separate pieces of information; fuelling creativity and innovation. They think inside and outside of the classroom and consistently draw upon knowledge skills and information that they have acquired from multiple sources when making sense of new content.

3. Present multiple viewpoints

Where left brain learners tend to be more fixed in their own viewpoints and opinions, the right brain learner has a natural ability to move lucidly between different perspectives as part of their creative tendency; and this is most certainly what they prefer to do  in the classroom as it helps their learning process.

Activities such as debates where they have to swap sides and fight for both sides of the party are great for this. You can also encourage learners to reflect, share and discuss how they believe others might be feeling in given scenarios.  Alternatively you can encourage them to take a philosophical approach to exploring different concepts, coming up with different ideas and theories but they neither agree or disagree with but regardless must explore.  

4.  Get visual

Right brain learners share many commonalities with the visual learner.  This side of the brain recognises colour shapes and imagery; so the more that we can include this in our courses, the greater the learning experience for our right brain learners.

5. Stimulate the senses

Right brain learners love to use all of the senses when learning. They can multitask quite efficiently and do not become distracted when they are stimulated by multiple senses.  They can quite happily listen, read, write, think and sing to music all at the same time.

6. Let them take their own notes

Because right brain learners like to conceptualise they adore the opportunity to write notes draw diagrams and doodle while you’re teaching.

Engaging the right brain learner can be a simple as printing out your PowerPoint slides as a handout that has a gap for them to make their own notes next to each one.

They like to see how you have explained something and illustrated it, but then have the opportunity to translate that into their own understanding and style right next to it.

7. Get practical

Right brain learners like to think out loud.   Therefore providing them with opportunities to have open discussion with others can substantially support their learning.   Using mind maps,  spider diagrams,  vision boards, post-it-note idea mapping, scrapbooks and project work in the learning process are all great ways of engaging the right brain learner.

8.  Creative problem solving

Because right brained learners find it easy to see the bigger picture, they are less likely to get bogged down in the detail of the problem (and also find it frustrating to do so), Preferring instead to come up with alternative methods and solutions.  If you can provide guided creative problem solving activities in your online and offline training this is sure to engage the right brain learner.  As an example, if you teach entrepreneurship, perhaps you could give your learners a challenge where they must compete against their classmates to raise a certain amount of money within a fixed period of time starting with just $1!

So there you have it! 8 ways that you can implement into your online of face to face training programs right now to better engage your right brain learners!

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