2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Debugging skills are critical to the electrical engineering industry, as deficiencies can incur significant costs in time, money, and resources. Despite the importance of well-developed hardware debugging skills, this skill set is often assumed to develop implicitly throughout an undergraduate ECE curriculum. To help fill this gap, we are developing a new circuit debugging curriculum for undergraduate ECE students. A key component of this curriculum development effort is creating assessments that qualitatively and quantitatively measure changes in debugging skills throughout the semester.

In the Spring 2024 semester, we conducted a trial of three debug assessments with 29 undergraduate students to observe baseline debugging skills before introducing the new curriculum. While the assessment yielded valuable insights, reflective journaling, coding of findings, and reviewing student feedback revealed opportunities to improve the assessment by removing bias and giving students a voice as collaborators in the curriculum development process.

An assessment should include the following features to provide students with a better opportunity to demonstrate the full extent of their debugging skills:

Ample Space for Expression: Students need sufficient space to articulate various debugging methodologies such as hand calculations, schematic sketches, and written descriptions of unexpected behaviors. A cramped handout prevents freely expressing debugging thoughts; students erase ideas they perceive as “irrelevant” and “flawed” or omit critical information that would better represent their understanding of the buggy circuit.

Eliminate Unintended Time Sinks: Removing unintended obstacles such as collecting cables required for measurements during the time limit can reduce the impact of stress and test anxiety on the quality of student answers.

Accommodating Time Limits: Debugging can be stressful even without a tight deadline. A restrictive time limit adds additional stress and may prevent students from exploring multiple root causes or verifying the validity of their proposed solution.

Dedicated Space for Measurements: Providing space to record key circuit measurements before and after implementing a proposed fix encourages students to evaluate whether their solution has improved circuit performance as expected.

By refining our debugging assessment in these ways, we anticipate observing more accurate and specific changes in students’ debugging throughout their engagement with the debugging curriculum.