Going Remote: Teaching Microwave Engineering in the Age of the Global Pandemic and Beyond

The widespread offering of online engineering classes has not been without its share of controversy [1] – [7] . There are those who question the pedagogic quality of courses made freely available through video-sharing platforms like YouTube, which feature largely crowdsourced and crowd-vetted content, despite such technologies figuring prominently in the evolving skill sets and preferences of engineering students. The same group typically considers the more traditional in-person format to be a critical element in learning engineering fundamentals, serving the secondary purpose of fostering much-needed discipline, patience, imagination, and visualization. Most established engineering institutions have recognized the value of both approaches (consider these popular examples: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [8] and NPTel [9] ) and supplemented a majority of their in-person classes with a smattering of online offerings, though reservations may persist [10] – [12] .