Roubleshooting skills for non-engineers in technological jobs

Abstract

Although there is an increasingly interest for people to become technologically literate, there exists a technical knowledge gap between industry needs and workforce competencies, especially in developing countries such Colombia. That is why technological skills such as troubleshooting need to be developed. Moreover, learning technology skills may be used as a tool for learning new context-specific knowledge. The following study examined why troubleshooting may be an effective tool for non-engineers to learn technical knowledge. Troubleshooting involves essential elements of the learning process. The constant interaction with real artifacts, the immediate feedback and need of reflection for diagnosing faults, and the use of previous knowledge are elements intrinsically integrated to the troubleshooting process. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.