Distance learning is not an online face-to-face – Observations in microelectronic education

International audienceDue to the pandemic in early 2020, the French government, like many others, decided to temporarily close the universities and asked the faculties to entirely focus on online education or e-learning. In a world where digital contents exponentially increase, this pandemic has been an opportunity to develop distance e-learning. Many politicians found a unique opportunity to decrease or even eliminate face-to-face teaching activities. In engineering, this experience has shown clear limits and weaknesses. This paper highlights several problems that raised in microelectronic education and good reasons to move back to face-to-face learning especially for the acquisition of know-how. Indeed, know-how is mandatory for engineers, masters and PhDs in science and technology and this will never be replaced by a virtual experience. Real practice is the necessary price to pay for meeting the technological challenges of the upcoming decade.