Creative, out of the box thinking methods are the hallmark of all great entrepreneurs. And now leading educators from some of the world’s most prestigious universities are working to balance the use of both right and left brain thinking methods when delivering courses or designing curricula. 

• Northwestern University uses the term Whole-Brain Engineering™ to recruit engineers to attend its renowned engineering school. 

• Wharton Business School is developing both right and left brain teaching and promoting this in their ads about the university 

• Even Mercedez Benz is promoting how their cars appeal to both the right and left brain.

So, a key question for teachers…

How can I infuse right brain thinking skills into my classroom to prepare students for the challenges of a rapidly changing world? 

Left Brain teaching is more verbal, systematic, and factual. While right brain teaching is more open-ended creative and exploratory.  So, clearly teachers should balance the use of both. But sometimes teachers focus more on left brained vs right brained methods.

Want to Learn More? 

Request our Free Guide to Creating Right Mode Instruction and receive a free trial to the online HMI, a tool for assessing individual preferences for either right or left mode processing. 

Or if you just want to jump in and try some new things here are some things to try out…

1. Have students experience their own brain processing preferences at the onset of a course or a new section of content. That way, they will enter into the experience with a fresh and open mind and a better understanding of how to use both methods as they move through the learning process.  

2. Use visual assignments that tap into student creativity and their preferences to display information in their own creative and intuitive ways?  This is as simple as changing a worksheet assignment to a visual depiction of what they understand about a key concept. 

3. Use metaphors to deepen student understanding or mastery. 

4. Use creative project assignments, where student must search for the answer and devise their own conclusions.