Troubleshooting is a learning process

Several tools have been built to try to understand the debugging process and to try to help students learn to troubleshoot. Two tools based on expert systems allow students to be guided and evaluated in their debugging procedures. The first comprises an expert system, a logic simulator, and a verifier, connected to the circuit under test. The second is a full simulation of a photoboard circuit and logic probe together with the supportive software to guide and monitor the student through the debugging process. A model of the learning process itself is being built to test the hypothesis that, in learning to debug, a series of cases is experienced and that after a small number of similar occurrences rules will be formed that will enable the debugging process to take place much more rapidly