The pedagogy of troubleshooting in Electronics Engineering:

Troubleshooting a system or device is a fundamental requirement for an engineering career. Engineering faculty members, including lecturers and laboratory technicians, are responsible for equipping undergraduates with troubleshooting skills. However, faculty members in Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education possess varying competency levels across their disciplines. In engineering education, the focus is particularly on engineering design. This study examined the perceptions of Electronics Engineering faculty members involved in teaching and training undergraduates, particularly regarding troubleshooting, one of the STEM-based core competency skills required in the electronics engineering industry. This research adopted an exploratory qualitative case study design conducted at a South African engineering university. Six faculty members were purposively selected and interviewed, four with previous industry experience and two without. The findings revealed that although faculty members recognized troubleshooting as a crucial STEM-based skill, particularly in engineering, they did not explicitly teach it as they did other competency skills. This study argues that engineering graduates may lack the necessary competencies for industry practice if troubleshooting skills are not integrated through appropriate explicit pedagogical strategies, such as inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, and hands-on experiential methods supported by technology-enhanced learning tools. Aligning troubleshooting teaching with STEM pedagogies and leveraging educational technology, such as simulation-based learning, intelligent tutoring systems, virtual and remote laboratories, and AI-driven simulations, can enhance students’ ability to diagnose and resolve engineering problems effectively.