2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Circuit Analysis is a critical course for various engineering disciplines that introduces students to the problem-solving approach that is an essential part of engineering curricula. It is a required and cornerstone course for electrical and computer engineering majors which often presents students with significant challenges due to its abstract concepts and mathematical complexities. Practice is the key to developing and mastering circuit analysis problem solving skills, which also plays a pivotal role in overall student success in this course and later in many upper-level courses. Traditional teaching methods, which heavily rely on lectures and static assignments, often fail to sufficiently accommodate this important need. The traditional approach with static homework assignments significantly limits the scope of practice and cannot provide quick feedback. In addition, for a moderate to large class size, it becomes extremely difficult for an instructor to grade large volumes of assignment questions and makes it hard to track and identify the exact nature of an individual student’s deficiency in applying theoretical concepts to solve a particular type of question.

App-based learning offers a dynamic alternative, enabling students to engage with contents and assignments interactively and intuitively. In this project, we have designed and developed an open access, freely available computer application (hereafter referred as the ‘App’), which serves as an auto-generating question bank integrating various major topics of Circuit Analysis problems arranged in tiers that are based on different levels of difficulty. The App includes major circuit analysis question categories including problems on simple Series-Parallel DC Circuits, Complex DC Circuits (Nodal and Mesh Analysis), Linear Circuit Theorems (Thévenin, Norton, Superposition), 1st-order Transient Circuit analysis, and AC (Sinusoidal) Circuit Analysis. Thirty base questions were designed under each topic (or chapter) which are divided into three tiers or difficulty levels – easy, medium and hard, with 10 questions at each level. The total number of base questions for all five chapters adds up to 150. Base questions are programmed to randomly alter the parameters of certain components in a circuit through predefined ranges and steps, resulting in auto-generated variants of the base questions and their corresponding answers. This empowers the App to automatically generate thousands of question variations. The App provides instant feedback when an answer is entered for a given question. An advanced feature of the App includes real-time learning progress tracking. A chart on the main window displays the number of questions successfully completed in each difficulty level under each chapter.

We have conducted a pilot run by implementing the App during the fall 2024 semester where students from two sections of a Circuit Analysis course at XXX university have participated in our study. An assessment was carried out at the end of the semester by analyzing student surveys. A set of survey questions were designed to capture student perception of the App’s impact on their learning as well as their user experience with the App. The survey questions consisted of both Likert scale and free-response questions. The responses to the Likert scale questions were analyzed using descriptive statistics (e.g. mean, median, mode and frequency distribution). The free-response questions have been analyzed using thematic analysis. A detailed anatomy of the App, its features, and results from our pilot run implementation are presented in this paper. By facilitating rigorous practice via auto-generated questions on demand, providing instant feedback, and tracking progress in real-time, the App can serve as an indispensable tool for learners in introductory Circuit Analysis courses. Our results indicated that the App made an overall positive impact to the students’ problem-solving skill development and learning process with room for further improvements that can potentially make it even more impactful.