Better Troubleshooting: WPI Aims to Improve How Engineers Learn to Solve Problems

Sabuncu and Telliel’s research is being supported by a $399,935 grant from the National Science Foundation, and their work aims to break away from traditional training programs that encourage learners to follow a linear series of steps to identify and solve problems.

“The traditional approach to troubleshooting education involves studying problems that have already occurred and the steps that were taken to solve those problems,” says Telliel, who is affiliated with WPI’s Interactive Media and Game Development program and director of the university’s Great Problems Seminar program. “Often, however, real-world problems are messy and difficult to define. Information about the problem leaks out little by little. In practice, students do not really begin to learn troubleshooting until after graduation, when they begin their careers.”

Examples of novel, ill-defined engineering problems might include a nuclear power plant disaster, an equipment malfunction in space, or performance problems with autonomous vehicles that are regulated by multiple agencies and built with parts made across the globe, the researchers say. 

WPI’s three-year project will examine how engineers reason, learn, remember, and make sense of a messy, unique situation as it unfolds. To design their educational approach, the researchers will lean on “cognitive flexibility theory,” which holds that people learn to handle new situations by revisiting ideas from many cases and from multiple perspectives, rather than by memorizing set procedures.

Sabuncu, Telliel, and a team of graduate and undergraduate students will write case studies of problems that students can examine while practicing “adaptive troubleshooting.” The cases will incorporate text, images, video, and other media. Students using the software platform will be guided to compare the cases, note where they overlap and differ, and piece together an approach to problems.  

The project builds on an earlier NSF-funded study of interviews with experienced engineers about how they make sense of complex, unfolding problems. 

“Troubleshooting is never only technical,” Telliel says. “A problem moves through people and organizations. Part of the skill is knowing whom to ask and recognizing what someone else can see that you can’t. Insights from new interviews with practicing engineers will be key to effective training with case studies.”

The WPI project reflects the university’s identity as a place for immersive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. All undergraduates spend time working in teams and individually putting the theories they learn in classrooms to work in real-life settings, including at project centers around the world.

Sabuncu and Telliel say the platform’s goal is to help students learn to ask social and technical questions and to seek out hidden evidence that can illuminate problems. The researchers plan to incorporate the software system into a WPI fluid mechanics course and eventually other courses in engineering.

“This research is not just about enabling students to solve problems faster or reach particular conclusions,” Sabuncu says. “We want students to expand their horizons so they can ask better questions about problems that will occur in the future.”