Great question. Until quantum computing is a large enough field to justify inclusion in required courses, this is a huge challenge. We have three tactics. First, make teacher educational resources accessible so that teachers are not intimidated about learning it. Second, make resources so that are fun and accessible with good teacher-facing materials so that students enjoy it and it makes it easy for teachers or facilitators can do it in their programs. These need to be careful about the level of mathematics involved with students who haven't taken linear algebra. Finally, we need to create programs in places were URMs already are - libraries and existing programs targeting URMs. But we acknowledge that this is an uphill battle. We're just hoping to work hard on it from the beginning rather than retrofitting after 20 years when we see the inequities.

I see, yes makes sense. I also wonder if finding active quantum computing researchers originally from underrepresented groups in STEM, and asking them to provide intros about themselves and their work could be a way to engage with students from URM…

As part of a separate grant, Q2Work, we are working with industry partners (Q12 Partnership) to identify diverse QIS professionals (diverse in ethnicity, gender, and area) for career highlights. We're making very short videos (~1-3 min) and are going to post them. So, yes, what a wonderful idea!! They will be featured on our website (https://q12education.org/).

Circling back to Andres's earlier question about specific strategies to ensure that students from underrepresented groups in STEM are part of this program. In conjunction with the UChicago departmental BPC effort, we have partnered with two college readiness programs which reach over 250 underserved students, more than three-quarters of whom are low income, first generation, and Black or Latinx; two-thirds of whom are female. This partnership made possible a month-long "Demystifying Quantum Computing" class last summer, provides authentic student feedback, and creates future QIS engagement opportunities (e.g., we will offer the course again in the future- hopefully in person).

That's a very interesting question, and a reason why I think it's so important to encourage diversity early on - so the designers can imagine how it affects all communities. We're pretty far out from envisioning a lot of the ways QC would be used. The big application classes currently thought about are optimization and molecular simulation. I don't know a whole lot about the details of how the algorithms work, but I imagine there are similar issues in the optimization area with using poorly-understood algorithms on historically-biased data. For molecular simulation, especially for drug design, we would want to make sure that the information being used to inform the system is drawn from all populations. The medical community has a poor historical track record with obtaining data on all populations, not just white males.

Hi Anita - We have implemented some of the interactive activities in informal spaces. Some we've tested out as facilitated program cart activities at interactive science centers. We have also implemented activities at after school programs and during a school Maker Faire. Across all the informal learning spaces, the activities have been tested with all ages from pre-school children through adults. 

Having read the ECD resource, I agree that we are definitely using that process at some level. The biggest difference is that the resource implies that the designer is trying to determine whether or not a student reaches a desired level of competency, whereas we're using these activities to elicit student thoughts in order to better understand how students conceptualize them and integrate them into their own knowledge; in some sense, we're assessing the learning trajectories and activities, not the students, because we have no confidence that what we "expect" them to know is reasonable.

It's all good, Diana! I agree with the design-based research emphasis that you describe. 

That would be wonderful! You are welcome to all of our resources! We'd love to hear your feedback - we haven't been able to run many pilots due to the pandemic. At the high school level, some of my videos might be appropriate - they introduce quantum concepts as they apply to quantum computing, but they delay the linear algebra a bit (and then introduce it very explicitly). I'd be happy to correspond over email.

Diana, that is great.  I get to work with Mr Mbasu  and will do anything I can to him him experiment and try out some of your approach. @Zach, this could be a great project area for several students or for Arica Maths Initiative, no?

Plus a little bit of affinity living south of UCSB and having two Maroon degrees :)

I love the idea of testing our materials in Africa. I taught physics in Tanzania for two years and so I have a personal connection and interest in East Africa.

Small world!