“It Must be the Resistor!” A Pilot Study Unveiling Student Debugging Misconceptions and Biases

Debugging incurs significant costs in the semiconductor industry, with some engineers spending 40% or more of their time debugging. Despite the critical importance of this skill, undergraduate students often need help to develop it. In this paper, we administered a circuit debugging test to second and third-year electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students in an introductory microelectronics class. The buggy circuit was a non-inverting amplifier printed circuit board with a misoriented op-amp. The pilot results on 26 students revealed concerns about misconceptions and biases in their debugging methodology. 54% of students focused predominantly on scrutinizing resistors, neglecting a broader exploration of potential issues. Furthermore, 46% limited their search for errors to a single potential problem, and 15% could not accurately measure resistance. Ultimately, 31% successfully identified and corrected the bug, indicating exam expectations were achievable and giving us hope that debugging skills are within reach for our students. However, specialized training may be needed to get them there.