- For each participant: one sheet each of three different colors of sticking dots
(^1 ⁄ 2 ′′diameter) and one pad of 4 x 6 Post-it®Notes.
Handout
- Brain Splitter Handout
Time
45 minutesRelated Activities
- Get Crazy [5]
- Blender [58]
- Force-Fit Game [74]
Procedure
- Tell the participants that this will be an exercise based on the metaphor of brain
hemispheric dominance. Briefly explain the differences between right- and left-
brained thinking as described in the Background section. - Divide the participants into smaller groups of four to seven people based on their
professed right- or left-brain dominance. That is, ask them to decide which type of
thinking best would characterize them in general. (If necessary, you may have to
assign people arbitrarily to one of the two categories to equalize the size of the
groups.) Try to create an equal number of left- and right-brained groups. (If you
want to be more precise in dividing the participants, you could have them com-
plete the Hermann Brain Dominance Questionnaire, available at: http://www.hbdi.com.)) - Distribute the Brain Splitter Handout, review it with the participants, and answer
any questions they may have. - Instruct the left-brain group members to generate as many practical, conventional,
and logical ideas as they can in 20 minutes. - Tell the right-brainers to generate as many far-out, unconventional, and illogical
ideas as they can in 20 minutes. - After they have verbalized their ideas, have all participants write them down on
sheets of flip-chart paper. - Ask the members of each group to count off by twos. Have all of the left-brain
“ones” move to a group with right-brained “ones” and the left-brained “twos”
with the right-brained “twos.” There now should be at least two groups com-
posed of one-half left-brain thinkers and one-half right-brained thinkers. These
groups represent symbolically the “corpus collosum” function of the human
brain.
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