Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

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 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.