How To Engage Global and Analytical Learners in Your Courses

One of the major things we need to consider when it comes to designing our online or offline training course, is whether we have designed our program for all of the different types of learners:

• visual learners
• audio learners
• kinaesthetic learners
• reading and writing learners

In this post, we will look at how you  can optimise your courses for the global and analytical learners.

‘Global’ and ‘analytical’ are the two major ‘information processing styles’ that learners can fall into.

By understanding the difference between these two styles, we can be better prepared to create transformational adult learning programs.

If you are writing, creating or delivering training programs of any kind, make sure you know your global from your analytical learner, and how best to engage them.

How To Engage The Global Learner:

As the names would suggest, global learners are people who learn better by approaching new concepts, skills and knowledge from a much larger viewpoint.  If you can give your global learners the opportunity to see their learning program and all learning within it, from a ‘bird’s eye’ point of view, you will be helping them considerably.  If you want to give a global learner an engaging learning experience, then give them the ‘bigger picture’.

They get very bored and frustrated with details and long winded explanations.

They are the kind of learner who has already flicked through their entire workbook and figured out the general gist of the program (which is all they need), before you’ve even asked them to open the first page.  They are also perfectly happy to jump straight to chapter 14 without even glancing at chapters 1-13, simply because that’s the most relevant or interesting for them.

If you have bullet points on your slides, they will already have skipped through to reading the last one before you’ve even started explaining the first one and will immediately proceed to get bored and frustrated as they already know what you’re going to say and don’t need it repeated.

If they are taking an online course, they will scroll through all of the lecture titles and happily watch the videos in a non-sequential order based on what most immediately stands out or rings through as applicable for them; they will even happily feel like they have ‘completed’ the course without having watched all of the videos.

To enable a better learning experience for the global learner, make sure that your learning programs have a very clear overview, that the learning content is open to be engaged with at any time (global learners hate drip-fed content) and that videos have an ‘increase the speed’ function so that they can skip past what they don’t feel is necessary.

Synchronistic learning for global learners can be frustrating – they don’t necessarily like to go in a set order or be forced to pace through a course at the same time as ‘everyone else’.  They will enjoy your program more if they can jump through it in any order they like, at any time they like and at whatever speed they like.

To keep global learners happy, ensure your course has a very clear objective, definitive relevance to their lives and a long term future ‘bigger picture’ purpose – one that goes far beyond the learning objectives of the curriculum.

How To Engage The Analytical Learner

Analytical learners on the other hand, like things to go perfectly in order, in a perfectly consecutive, sequential pattern. They like their learning to be presented to them in step by step stages, with each step logically following on from the last.  Analytical learners love drip-fed content – especially if it is delivered in accordance with a pre-provided stringent schedule.

If they feel like a step is missing or been skipped passed, they can feel annoyed, frustrated, and hard-done by or like something has been taken away from them.

The analytical learner will not appreciate being asked to work on chapter 3, unless they have fully completed chapters 1 and 2 first – in that order.

Make sure your courses have and follow a very clear structure, plan and schedule, explain all of your content in detail and do not miss any steps or bullet points when presenting if you wish to engage your analytical learners.

Getting the balance right can be tough, as naturally our online and offline training is going to include a mixture of both information processing styles.  But considering this fact, and designing your training design, delivery and access in a way that provides a fair compromise for both styles, will set your learners and your training course up for success.

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