Shifting Communities
Incorporating Brain Color into Multiple Intelligences to Create a Blended Learning Context
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marine Milad Mitry
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 activities in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. The incorporation of target learners’ brain color into their multiple intelligences was based on using two inventories which identify 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 sessions. This incorporation helped the researcher identify the learners’ preferred means of learning and assessment in addition to dividing the learners into heterogeneous and homogeneous groups to detect the efficacy of performing some linguistic activities whether in-class or online in groups. The results of these two inventories (CBCI and MII) were statistically analyzed and a correlation has been reached. The statistical analysis of the learners’ performance in analyzing and solving the given linguistic activities was in favor of the heterogeneous groups with a variety of brain color and multiple intelligences. This was of a great help to the researcher in establishing a blended learning context that succeeded in engaging everyone as an active learner in the learning process.
Socioeconomic Effects of Ethnoreligious Conflicts in Lagos, Nigeria
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ayodele Omojuwa
This study examines the ethnoreligious conflict effects on the local market of Lagos State, Nigeria with a view toward determining its role in the lives of people in the community. The paper relies on both primary and secondary sources including a structure research questionnaire, books, journals and magazines that deal with religious conflicts and crises in Nigeria. Intractable conflict and political economy theories are blended in our analysis. We argue that inter-religious conflicts in Nigeria defy resolutions and seem unending because they are intractable conflicts, which are sustained largely because they serve the economic interest of certain religious leaders who conceal the economic matrix behind their support. This work recommends that increased awareness should be created to enlighten people on the dangers of these crises in the market place. We suggest government strive to provide laws to protect all citizens against ethno-religious crises. Finally, religious leaders should preach and teach to increase national unity, purity, tolerance, morality, love and honesty to reduce conflicts among religious groups, thereby uniting through dialogue for national development.
Mentoring Practices of Business Education Lecturers in Colleges of Education in Delta States of Nigeria
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Josephine Obiageli Nwachokor
There have been growing concerns recently about the quality of education in Nigeria especially the teacher education. The training of teachers is more theoretical than practical and teaching has become complex with different classroom tasks to be performed using varied strategies and assessment methods. It is against this background to fill the gap between theory and what is practised that mentoring practices of Business Education Lecturers in Colleges of Education in Delta State of Nigeria became the focus of this study. The population of this study is comprised 110 business education lecturers of four Colleges of Education in Delta State. No sampling was carried as the population was manageable. Two research questions were raised to guide the study and two hypotheses were tested. Study design was descriptive survey design. A questionnaire which was validated by experts and with reliability coefficient of 0.78 was used as instrument for data collection. Arithmetic mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data in respect of the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of this study revealed that mentoring practices of Business Education Lecturers in Colleges of Education in Delta State of Nigeria is effective. It was recommended among others that mentoring practices of Business Education Lecturers should be formalised in such a way that every newly employed lecturer becomes a beneficiary.
