A Template-Based Short Course Concept on Android Application Development

Smartphones are a common accessory to provide rich user experience due to superior memory, advanced software-hardware support, fast processing, and multimedia capabilities. Responding to this trend, advanced engineering systems tend to integrate mobile devices with their solutions to facilitate usability. With many young students showing interest in learning mobile application development, conventional electrical engineering undergraduate education cannot meet the needs of this workforce due to fast changes in mobile technology and limited curricula hours. Templatebased learning (TBL) methods may overcome these limitations by shortening the learning cycle through fast hands-on introduction to development tools, basic programming, and application development and integration process. Students manipulate code fragments in provided templates, and compile, embed, and run applications. They also implement new applications reusing fragments from other similar templates. TBL modules can be integrated in pre-existing conventional courses to provide basic and fast exposure to the subject. This paper provides an example of a TBL template library for Android phones, which has been used in a classroom setting to collect student attitude data and assess efficiency of the TBL approach.