Electromagnetics Education: Past, Present, and Future Directions

Electromagnetics education has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Innovations in wireless communication and other consumer applications have fueled strong interest in the field. New tools including visualizations, videos and simulations, and lower-cost equipment enabling hands-on design labs make teaching and learning electromagnetics much more engaging. Engineering careers today are broad, global, varied, and collaborative. Students need skills in communication and public outreach and experience working in diverse, multidisciplinary teams. New student-centered teaching methods––including active learning, flipped, hybrid, and hyflex classrooms, and problem-based learning––provide opportunities to more deeply understand the spatiotemporal characteristics of electromagnetics fields. COVID-19 brought these new teaching approaches into the mainstream, providing numerous opportunities for experiential learning that can help students gain a deeper understanding of how electromagnetic fields behave, and how we can control them to design functional devices. But with these opportunities come significant expectations for use of technology in the classroom, flexibility and student-centered learning, and preparation for a rapidly changing work environment, A review of the past and the present of electromagnetics education and education research informs any discussion of future developments of what we teach (i.e., the changing electromagnetics curriculum), how we teach (i.e., new advances in pedagogy), and whom we teach (i.e., the opportunities and challenges of diversity).