Development of a smart program for the intellectual style inventory

Abstract

Background and Objective: The intellectual style inventory (ISI) is a reliable and valid tool for learning style assessment. It is based on the most popular and recent theories that describe learning. The ISI introduces four styles of thinking and four styles of perception and roots them in the four cortical lobes of the brain. It is able to describe one's natural lead in learning with respect to cortical preference in thinking and perception and produce different learning profiles, accordingly. The aim of the present study was to use potentials of software programming in converting the paper based psychometric tool of the ISI into a readymade, user-friendly program. Materials and Methods: The software was developed using visual basic and microsoft access. It was then tested on 42 volunteers working at the National Research Centre of Egypt. Volunteers successfully used the program and interesting data were collected describing their learning styles. Results collected were analyzed statistically using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics, comparative test and chi-square test were done for all data. Results: Females showed significantly higher score on the base right thinking style at p < 0.01. Similarly, scores for the front left thinking style as first preference were significantly higher than perception style at the same lobe. The developed software program succeeded to represent the ISI and to introduce it to end user in an interesting and easy way. Conclusion: The ISI software program is recommended to be used by practitioners in fields of education, human resources, counseling, research and others. As an extension of the MBTI, the ISI could enrich the field of personality software engineering and introduce a new material that could expand knowledge about personality theory and application. The ISI has many advantages as it is designed in Arabic and English, easy, accurate, can easily run on most operating systems with simple installation process and introduces scientific reporting for individuals about their learning abilities.