DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPUTER-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR TROUBLESHOOTING AND REPAIRS OF CELLULAR PHONES

Abstract

Cellular phone technology is relatively new to developing nations like Nigeria and as such there is paucity of resources for learning troubleshooting and repairing of cellular phones. Hence, the authors designed and developed a learning environment to help students learn how to troubleshoot and repair cellular phones. The developmental process began with conducting literature review on both principles of operation as well as fault symptoms and remedies associated with cellular phones. This was followed by consulting experts on the appropriate procedures for troubleshooting and repairs of various problems associated with cellular phones. In addition, the authors reviewed two computer-based environments developed for troubleshooting of equipment to guide the present research. The knowledge and experiences gathered were then used to develop the computer-based learning environment for troubleshooting and repairs of cellular phones. The developed learning environment has four main modules, namely, theory, practical, examination and database. The theory module contains principles of operation of cellular phones. The practical module provides environment where student will learn how to troubleshoot and repair various problems concerning cellular phones through problem solving strategy. The examination module is a multiple choice test which test students’ understanding of various parts of cellular phone as well as its principles of operation. The database stores users’ login details and students results. With this learning environment, student can view his/her examination result immediately after finishing the examination. Likewise, the lecturer can view students’ results after the examination session. The computer-based learning environment was implemented using java programming language and developed under java netbeans integrated development environment (8.2). The database of the learning system was developed using MySQL The database and its tables were created using MYSQL Workbench (8.0).The database stores various data such as students’ results and users’ login details. The developed computer-based learning environment was tested and evaluated by students and the result of the evaluation shows that students were satisfied with the performance of the computer-based learning environment. Furthermore, the students recommended the use of the developed learning environment for learning the troubleshooting and repairs of cellular phones in the College.