Today’s interdisciplinary quantum information classroom: Themes from a survey of quantum information science instructors

Meyer, Josephine C.; Passante, Gina; Pollock, Steven J.; Wilcox, Bethany R.

doi:10.1103/physrevphyseducres.18.010150

Cited by 30 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…In this study, we observed that students often struggled to distinguish the magnitude of the effects of linear and exponential scaling. This tendency was especially pronounced among undergraduate students without extensive CS exposure, who were less likely to have been exposed to the concepts of "big O" notation 5 and complexity classes in prior CS coursework. The following representative response to part (a) illustrates this difficulty we observed among students: Diana (3rd year UG, appl.…”

Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 98%

“…It is worth emphasizing that even among students who recognized the exponentially growing Hilbert space, this phenomenon was often treated on equal footing with linear effects. Here, Felix immediately recognizes the exponential scaling but then describes how the linear effects make it "even 5 Big O notation is a framework used in computer science to analyze the time-complexity of algorithms.…”

Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fueled by the rapid growth in demand for jobs in the quantum industry as well as funding from the National Quantum Initiative Act of 2018, interdisciplinary quantum information science (QIS) coursework has begun flourishing at all levels across U.S. universities [1][2][3][4][5]. Such coursework can cover a variety of related topics including quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum cryptography.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much DBER work on QIS education has specifically focused on industry needs for workforce development [2,[6][7][8], trends in existing coursework [1,3,5], or teaching quantum computing to computer science students [9][10][11][12]. Chandralekha Singh's group has pioneered a series of Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorials (QUILTs) to help students in existing quantum mechanics classes learn quantum information processing [13][14][15], and recent work has developed curricular materials for secondary school audiences [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating student interpretations of the differences between classical and quantum computers: Are quantum computers just analog classical computers?

Meyer¹,

Passante²,

Pollock³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Significant attention in the PER community has been paid to student cognition and reasoning processes in undergraduate quantum mechanics. Until recently, however, these same topics have remained largely unexplored in the context of emerging interdisciplinary quantum information science (QIS) courses. We conducted exploratory interviews with 22 students in an upper-division quantum computing course at a large R1 university crosslisted in physics and computer science, as well as 6 graduate students in a similar graduate-level QIS course offered in physics. We classify and analyze students' responses to a pair of questions regarding the fundamental differences between classical and quantum computers. We specifically note two key themes of importance to educators: (1) when reasoning about computational power, students often struggled to distinguish between the relative effects of exponential and linear scaling, resulting in students frequently focusing on distinctions that are arguably better understood as analog-digital than classical-quantum, and (2) introducing the thought experiment of analog classical computers was a powerful tool for helping students develop a more expertlike perspective on the differences between classical and quantum computers.

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Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Results and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating student interpretations of the differences between classical and quantum computers: Are quantum computers just analog classical computers?

Meyer¹,

Passante²,

Pollock³

et al. 2022

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…The field of quantum information science and technology (QIST) is booming-governments are investing significant amounts of money in the field [1,2], industry is developing numerous commercially available quantum products [3], and new quantum education programs are being created [4][5][6]. Likewise, physics education has followed this trend with a recent push to examine the current state of QIST education [5][6][7][8][9][10] and investigate what skills and knowledge this new quantum workforce will need [11][12][13], adding on to the existing body of literature studying students' conceptual understanding of quantum mechanics (e.g., Refs. [14][15][16]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing quantum mechanics: The role of quantum experiments

Borish¹,

Werth²,

Lewandowski³

2022

2022 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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The second quantum revolution has prompted not only research in quantum science and technology, but also research on how best to educate students who may enter this burgeoning field. Much of the conversation around quantum science education has focused on students' conceptual learning or skills desired by potential employers; there has been an absence of work understanding how laboratory courses and experiments contribute to undergraduate quantum education. To begin understanding the role quantum experiments may play, we surveyed instructors who implement experiments with single and entangled photons in undergraduate lab courses and found that one of the most important learning goals was to "see quantum mechanics in real life." To better understand this goal, we interviewed 15 of the surveyed instructors asking what seeing quantum mechanics means to them and why they believe it is an important part of students' education. We present emergent themes from a qualitative coding analysis of these interviews, which begin to elucidate how instructors think about seeing quantum mechanics and what learning goals instructors hope seeing quantum mechanics-and working with quantum experiments more generally-will help students achieve.2022 PERC Proceedings edited by Frank, Jones, and Ryan; Peer-reviewed, doi.org/10.1119/perc.2022.pr.Borish Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

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