The Electronic Product Fabrication Practicum is a pivotal course in electronics and information programmes, marking the transition from foundational theory to job-oriented practice. It is typically scheduled after Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, Analog Electronics, and Digital Electronics, and carries 48 contact hours and 2 credits. Rather than producing a single deliverable, the course requires students to complete a full cycle of operations within a short time frame: component identification, assembly and wiring, parameter measurement, fault diagnosis, and standardised handover.

The course is aligned with the core competencies of the Electronic Equipment Assembler occupation and covers the typical tasks of assembly, commissioning, inspection, and basic maintenance, targeting the intermediate-level standard for “must-know” knowledge and “must-do” skills in the Chinese national occupational skill framework. From an implementation standpoint, assessment should not be confined to whether the finished product realises its intended function. It should also examine whether students can independently verify components against the bill of materials, perform pre-assembly checks, measure values at specified test points, reason about faults, and organise records. Testing logs, fault-analysis forms, and project-retrospective forms therefore serve both as student deliverables and as the principal evidence on which course attainment and process-oriented assessment are judged.

This subsection presents a needs analysis for the course reform, based on the course standard, prior classroom observations by the teaching team, and an initial review of process records generated during implementation. The analysis is used to identify recurring problems in task progression, record keeping, troubleshooting practice, and classroom operation; implementation outcomes are evaluated separately in Section 7. Four issues stand out.

1) Project tasks are not well aligned with workplace competencies. Prior teaching observations suggested that practicum tasks had often relied largely on simple circuit verification and assembly-by-diagram. Under teacher-led demonstration, students can reproduce basic operations; once step-by-step instructions are withdrawn and replaced by a bill of materials or a functional block diagram in the style of real engineering work, many students struggle to form a coherent testing and troubleshooting strategy. They continue to follow fixed procedures and cannot readily adapt debugging methods to the fault actually observed.

2) Process-oriented records are incomplete, and quality control is noticeably downstream. Existing teaching materials reflect final grades and portions of the learning trajectory, but the completeness and normativity of the various process records remain insufficient. In the absence of standardised record forms and stage-by-stage check-points, it is difficult for instructors to locate the specific step at which a student loses marks, and the diagnostic function of process-oriented assessment is hard to realise.

3) Therigourof debugging and troubleshooting practice needs to improve. Classroom observation reveals recurrent problems at the level of operational details: solder bridges on surface-mount IC pins, polarity-reversed components, omission of pre-power-on checks, and incorrect choice of RC parameters. In diagnosing faults, many students habitually swap components and repeatedly power the board on, lacking a disciplined approach that uses measurement data to localise the cause. Without a standardised troubleshooting procedure, the exercise readily degenerates into blind trial and error.

4) A short-cycle intensive practicum amplifies differences in baseline preparation. With 48 contact hours compressed into two weeks, the pace is rapid and the task load dense, so pre-existing gaps in student preparation quickly surface. From classroom performance and process records, weaker students are not wholly unable to operate equipment; rather, they repeatedly err in transitioning between stages, filling in records, and handling rework, with a cumulative effect on overall outcomes.

Subsequent improvements, then, cannot stop at swapping project topics or adding rubrics. The reform must answer three questions simultaneously: how should projects be sequenced, how should the process be managed, and how should outcomes be assessed?

Addressing the three questions posed above, the teaching team restructured the course holistically against the stated course objectives. Projects are arranged along a competency progression: Basic Assembly, Unit Debugging, and Comprehensive Troubleshooting. Each project follows a closed-loop workflow: Simulation, Assembly, Testing, Troubleshooting, and Retrospective. TBL-PDCA is adopted throughout to couple team collaboration with continuous process-quality control. Structured forms and physical artifacts serve as the evidence base for process-oriented assessment. Together these form an integrated “project-workflow-management-assessment” reform package.

Following the competency path from Basic Assembly through Unit Debugging to Comprehensive Troubleshooting, the course is organised into three progressive projects, shown in Table 1.

The three projects follow an overall progression from basic workmanship, through surface-mount practice, to comprehensive independent work. Project 1 concentrates on component identification, through-hole soldering, and pre-power-on checking. Project 2 introduces waveform measurement, SMD soldering, and fault localisation. Project 3 steadily reduces instructor prompting, requiring students to complete assembly, testing, and troubleshooting on their own. This ladder-like design lowers the entry barrier to a comprehensive practicum and matches the natural rhythm by which technical skills develop.

Table 1.Progressive project design.

If the sole criterion of success is whether a finished board powers on, students readily neglect workmanship details and testing records. To prevent this, each project is organised around the same five-step flow: Simulation, Assembly, Testing, Troubleshooting, and Retrospective. The 14-hour projects follow the schedule of Table 2; the 20-hour comprehensive project lengthens the assembly and troubleshooting stages accordingly.

Table 2. Closed-loop teaching workflow (14-hour project).

Students are organised into groups of three to four, with baseline ability and dexterity deliberately mixed. Role assignments are shown in Table 3. Roles are rotated, not fixed, so that each student in turn takes on equipment-and-component handling, workmanship, testing, and quality inspection, avoiding over-specialisation in a single familiar task.

Table 3. Group roles and associated forms.

Beyond the role-specific forms listed above, the Fault Analysis Form is a universal record for the troubleshooting stage. Every student completes one during diagnosis, either individually or collaboratively, and it serves as the central evidence of the student’s diagnostic reasoning and remedial work. Together with the role-based forms it constitutes a complete evidence base for process-oriented assessment.

The value of TBL collaboration rests on two effects. First, mixed-ability grouping combined with role rotation produces genuine mutual help within each group, mitigating the wide variance in student preparation characteristic of short, intensive practica. Second, process-step cross-checks, record verification, and peer review of outcomes, all conducted at the group level, advance individual skills and team collaboration in parallel.

The four types of forms have complementary functions: the Group Role Sheet records collaboration; the Daily Workstation Checklist assesses compliance with operational standards; the Process Acceptance Form controls stage-by-stage quality; and the Fault Analysis Form structures diagnostic reasoning. Together they allow instructors to pinpoint where a student is struggling and give students a concrete basis for group-level retrospectives.

In this course, PDCA is not a rhetorical label but is realised in the specific stages of every session. Before class, the emphasis is on preview and preparation; during class, on assembly and acceptance; at the end of class, on retrospective and remediation. The corresponding expectations and evidence types are given in Table 4.

Table 4. PDCA process-control schedule.

PDCA operates on three nested levels. The per-session loop surfaces and corrects problems within the same lesson. The per-project loop feeds defect data back into the design of the next project. The class-wide loop drives instructors to update workmanship focus points, fault cases, and assessment standards, sustaining continuous improvement.

The grade register records five equally weighted components, namely Project 1, Project 2, Project 3, everyday performance, and a final comprehensive assessment, each at 20%. From an instructional standpoint this consolidates into everyday 20%, projects 60%, and comprehensive assessment 20%, as summarised in Table 5.

Table 5. Course grade structure.

The weighting reflects a layered assessment intent: the everyday component constrains safety and day-to-day discipline; the three projects deliver the bulk of training; and the final assessment verifies that students can complete a comprehensive operation on their own under reduced prompting.

To avoid scoring only on whether the finished product works, the course decomposes a project grade across five kinds of evidence: component inspection, soldering and assembly, functional testing, fault analysis, and documentation and 5S. Using the DC regulated power-supply project as an example, the rubric is given in Table 6.

Table 6. Project scoring rubric, example (100 points).

To make the interpretation of the process records reproducible, three improvement indicators were operationalised as observable criteria rather than as general impressions. The criteria used in document review and classroom observation are summarised in Table 7.

Table 7. Observable criteria for interpreting process records.

Primary scoring of artifacts and forms was conducted by the course instructor who taught the class, because scoring had to be linked to on-site acceptance and remedial guidance. To reduce single-rater bias, a second teaching-team member double-checked borderline or incomplete submissions and spot-checked representative project forms against the rubric before final scores were entered in the grade register; disagreements were resolved by returning to the observable criteria in the scoring rubric.

In the classroom, ideological-political education is not delivered as separate exhortation but is woven into real practicum scenarios: assembly, testing, and team collaboration. Inside the PDCA cycle, contrasting well-formed and defective solder joints cultivates a craftsmanship ethos of steady refinement; strict enforcement of pre-power-on checks internalises safety awareness and a sense of professional responsibility. Group cross-checks and outcome presentations, combined with role rotation and mutual evaluation, develop teamwork. Case studies on domestically produced components and on the electronics supply chain foster students’ identification with their industry and an attachment to the broader national context in which their work sits.

Before class, the learning platform delivers short video lessons, self-assessment questions, and workmanship cards; preview activity is logged as evidence. In class, EDA simulations support the practicum, while structured forms, including some in paper format, capture test data, fault analyses, and cross-check outcomes for subsequent portfolio review. After class, instructors consolidate process records into individual student portfolios, providing a traceable and objective basis for process-oriented assessment.

This study adopts a practice-oriented single-case classroom-study design. The cohort consisted of all 41 students in Electronics Class 2 (Cohort 2023) at Jiangsu College of Engineering and Technology, and the teaching implementation took place in the second semester of the 2024-2025 academic year. The data sources included the course grade register, physical artifacts, Daily Workstation Checklists, Process Acceptance Forms, Test Record Forms, Fault Analysis Forms, Project Retrospective Forms, and instructor classroom-observation notes. The analysis combined descriptive statistics for grades and record completion with document review of process forms against the observable criteria listed in Table 7. Total-score statistics used all 41 students in the register; component-level statistics used the available valid records for each item, and missing component records caused by absence or incomplete submission were not imputed but were reported as valid-record counts.

The grade register records Project 1, Project 2, Project 3, everyday performance, the comprehensive final assessment, and the total score; each of the five components contributes 20% of the overall grade. Because of occasional student absences, the number of valid records is 39 for Project 1, 39 for Project 2, 37 for Project 3, and 40 for the comprehensive assessment; everyday performance has 41 valid records.

Overall grade statistics show a class mean of 80.94, a median of 87.20, a pass rate of 95.12%, and 75.61% of students scoring 80 or above. Alongside these grades, the archived artifact/form packages provide limited but verifiable process evidence: complete packages were available for 39/41 students in Project 1, 39/41 in Project 2, and 37/41 in Project 3. Among accepted submissions with available forms, the required pre-power-on self-check was documented in all cases. These indicators are used as evidence of record availability and safety-compliance implementation, not as direct measures of learning gain.

The three project means were 84.26, 84.44, and 84.05 for Projects 1, 2, and 3 respectively, and the comprehensive assessment mean was 87.45. Because the projects differed in task type, scaffolding, and difficulty, these scores are reported only as descriptive background and are not treated as a stage-by-stage progression curve. The interpretation of competency attainment therefore relies mainly on process-record review against the observable criteria in Table 7. The reviewed process records provide descriptive qualitative evidence of more disciplined diagnostic reasoning within the project sequence. In representative reviewed examples from Project 1 and Project 3, students’ diagnostic language shifts from generic descriptions such as “component damaged” or “circuit broken” toward more specific, data-grounded statements, such as “pin 3 of U1 measures 0 V; root cause is a cold solder joint at R2”. This pattern illustrates stronger alignment with the “symptom-evidence-judgement-action” diagnostic chain, while remaining descriptive rather than inferential.

On the whole, the available grades and process records indicate that most students met the basic technical requirements of the course and produced usable evidence in operational discipline, data recording, and fault analysis, thereby broadly attaining the stated course objectives and the intermediate-level competency requirement for the Electronic Equipment Assembler occupation.

Two limitations should be acknowledged. First, the practice covers a single class, and the process forms remain largely paper-based, which limits the efficiency of aggregation, querying, and traceability.

The current paper archive does not support reliable class-level statistics for rework frequency or for the percentage of Fault Analysis Forms containing a fully complete “symptom-evidence-judgement-action” chain. For this reason, the present paper reports record-package completion and pre-power-on self-checks as the verifiable process metrics, while rework frequency and fully complete fault-analysis chains are treated as priority indicators for future digital tracking.

Second, evaluation is dominated by in-house instructors, with limited participation from industry experts, and the alignment between course tasks and real workplace scenarios can still be tightened. Future work will pursue three improvements: i) digitise the Daily Workstation Checklist, the Process Acceptance Form, and the Fault Analysis Form, constructing a queryable and auditable process database; ii) extend the study to cross-class and cross-semester comparative designs, strengthening quantitative validation of the reform; and iii) co-develop comprehensive practicum tasks with industry engineers, grounded in actual work processes and occupational skill standards, in order to increase the authenticity and workplace relevance of the assessment.