Auto Electricity/ Electronics Maintenance Training Manual

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop auto-electricity/electronics maintenance training manual for technical college students. Auto-electricity/electronics is a mechanical trade course offered as motor vehicle mechanics work in technical colleges in Nigeria. This course is designed to produce competent craftsmen who can test, diagnose and completely repair any fault on motor vehicle to the manufacturer’s specification. However, most of these students lacked adequate practical and requisite skills needed to repair faults in auto electricity/electronics. The use of a training manual in auto-electricity/electronics may guide and overcome this problem. It has become pertinent therefore to develop a training manual in auto-electricity/electronics for technical college students. Research and Development (R and D) design was adopted for the study. The population of the study is 348, comprising 76 auto-mechanics teachers, 36 automobile supervisors and 237 students from all the technical colleges in North-Western States of Nigeria. There was no sample for the study; however, purposive sample was used for the students used for trial testing. Seven specific purposes, six research questions and a null hypothesis guided the study. The instruments for data collection are; Auto-Electricity Training Manual Questionnaire (ATMQ), Auto-Electricity Psychomotor Test (APT) and Auto-Electricity Rating Scale (ARS). The ATMQ, APT and ARS were subjected to face validation by five experts from the University, Technical Colleges and the Automobile Industry. The ATMQ was trial tested on students of Government Technical College Minna and automobile supervisors in automobile companies in Minna to establish its reliability. Cronbach Alpha was used to establish the reliability of ATMQ, sections B, C, D, E and F yielded coefficient of 0.72, 0.81, 0.76, 0.78 and 0.73 respectively. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance was used to establish the internal consistency of APT and yielded coefficient of 0.75. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation, while ANCOVA was used to test the hypothesis which yielded a coefficient of 0.044 at 0.05 level of significance. The study developed auto-electricity/electronics maintenance training manual with pictorial illustrations for technical colleges. Therefore, the use of training manual in auto-electricity/electronics maintenance was recommended in order to improve practical skills training in technical colleges.