Usability of the Colour Coded Resistor Identification tool for students of Tertiary institution

Abstract

Functionalities of electronic and electrical designs and experimentations are based not only on
accurate calculation, but also on the choice of correct components. However, the identification of passive
electrical components is one of the major problems facing the students of tertiary institutions during design
implementation and experimental works. This work is the development and testing of a visualization tool that
can easily be applied to enhance the identification of the values of coded resistors during laboratory experiments
and electrical design implementation. An algorithm was developed based on the standard British colour codes,
and was coded using Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 programming language. Sample cases were considered to
test the usability of the developed algorithm. To validate the usefulness of the tool, usability tests were carried
out by sequentially assigning sixteen samples of coded resistors for identification to part III, part IV and part V
students of electrical and electronic students. The results showed that when identifying without using the tool,
only 19% of the students identified resistors values correctly, whereas 96% of the students identified them
correctly when identification tool was used, indicating the usefulness of the tool to students of tertiary institution
engaging in electrical laboratory and design works.