Incorporating Brain Colour into the Multiple Intelligences to Create a Blended Learning Context: Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Groups

Abstract

This paper introduces a blended learning context that creates a community of practice. This community of practice presents a combination of face-to-face facilitated learning, e-learning, and self-study. A set of in-class and online linguistic activities was used in the implementation of this experiment to investigate the efficacy of performing these linguistic activities in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. The incorporation of target learners’ brain color into their multiple intelligences was based on using two inventories which identified learners’ brain color and multiple intelligences. The two inventories were Carmazzi’s (2009) Coloured Brain Communication Inventory (CBCI) and Sahakian’s (2001) Multiple Intelligences Inventory (MII). They were administered to a group of Arab Open University (AOU) students during their Grammar in English Language Contexts course tutorial sessions. This incorporation helped the researcher ascertain the learners’ preferred means of learning and assessment. In addition students were divided into heterogeneous and homogeneous groups to detect the efficacy of performing selected linguistic activities whether in-class or online in groups. The results of these two inventories (CBCI and MII) were statistically analyzed and a correlation was observed. The statistical analysis of the learners’ performance in analyzing and solving the given linguistic activities revealed distinct advantages of working in heterogeneous groups with individuals who possessed a variety of brain colors and multiple intelligences.