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From research to resources: assessing student understanding and skills in quantum computing
Thacker, Beth Wang, Jianlan Zhang, Yuanlin Tran, Quy Ban Vemula, Divya Sree Kushimo, Tunde
Thacker, Beth
Wang, Jianlan
Zhang, Yuanlin
Tran, Quy Ban
Vemula, Divya Sree
Kushimo, Tunde
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Issue Date
2025-12-18
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Article
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Keywords
Physics education research,Quantum computing,Strengths and difficulties
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Citation
Beth Thacker et al 2026 Eur. J. Phys. 47 015702
Abstract
The revolutionary new field of quantum computing (QC) continues to gain attention in industry, academia, and government in both research and education. At educational institutions, there is a proliferation of introductory courses at various academic levels signaling a growing interest and recognition of the significance of this field. A crucial and often overlooked aspect is the development of research-based materials and pedagogical approaches to effectively teach the complexities of QC to diverse cohorts of learners across multiple disciplines. There is a great need for empirical investigations of the effectiveness of learning materials and pedagogical approaches in this new interdisciplinary field. We present an empirical investigation done at an R1 institution using the multiple case study method. We compare a case study on students in an introductory QC course without research-based mini-tutorials to a study of students taking the QC course with research-based mini-tutorials. We compare the strengths and difficulties of students in the two courses, discuss the general strengths and difficulties of students across both courses, postulate the effectiveness of the mini-tutorials and discuss how they can be revised. Strengths across both classes include the ability to apply single-qubit and two-qubit gates, favoring application of Dirac notation, and a reasonable understanding of normalization, probability and teleportation described qualitatively. Difficulties across both classes included use of matrix representation, use of rotation gates, and an ability to recall and analyze quantitatively a circuit representing teleportation. We postulate that the mini-tutorials on gates, normalization, probability and a qualitative description of teleportation may have been effective in increasing students’ understanding of the concepts. We also identify mini-tutorials that may need revision. © 2025 The Author(s). Published on behalf of the European Physical Society by IOP Publishing Ltd.
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This is an open access article under the CC BY license.
Publisher
Institute of Physics
Journal
European Journal of Physics
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ISSN
01430807