1. Co-organizing Education section of the EQW 2020
Within the European Quantum Week initiative, held online in November 2020, an education session devoted to schools and general public was organized. Schools in different countries were offered to attend a 1-hour talk about Quantum Technologies in the national language. Altogether, 23 countries were on board and national organizers made a great job of reaching almost 9000 pupils around Europe in a life stream. Moreover, a list of video recordings about Quantum Technologies in many languages is now available on the Quantum Flagship youtube channel. This also helped to find a lot of great people who are ready to engage in future activities. The program of the EQW@School was managed by the QTEdu CSA team, along with the preparation of education material that was distributed to the national organizers.
2. Online portal and repository development
The web-based platform to host the databases planned in the project is under development but almost finalised. It will allow dissemination, community building and fruition of the repositories to be created and those already available, and it will be the coordination point for the QTEdu international community.
Actually, two databases (Education Programs and Material & tools) are created thanks to the strong collaboration with the QFlag CSA. At the moment they are hosted on the QFlag website (qt.eu) and they will soon migrate to the new platform. Additionally, two other databases at et.eu (Events and Jobs) were identified as suitable repositories for collecting Education and outreach events and internships for students at companies. All four databases are actively promoted by the QTEdu team in particular via QTEdu community events and actions. Also the data for the community member database is being collected and made accessible to the community members in a provisionary way meanwhile the structured repository is being developed.
3. Creation of QTEdu thematic Working Groups
Five working groups were created: School, Higher Education, Industry & Workforce, Education research, Equity & Inclusion). The formation of the WGs was ensured by a first call of the QT community and then during five days (08 – 12 March 2021), each one dedicated to one WG, by telematic meetings between QTEdu partners and registered people to the events. In total, all the working groups had 266 registered members in March 2021 and they continued to rise up to 325 by August 2021.
4. Formation of Pan-European Pilot consortia for QT Education projects
To facilitate the formation of pilot project consortia, the QTEdu CSA has developed a framework for 5 pilot programs targeting different audiences. Further on we organized successful pilot networking sessions where community members were free to start forming pilot consortia. Currently, 11 pilot projects have been formed within the programs devoted to outreach, schools, minor, master and industry.
5. Realization of a Competence Framework for Quantum Technologies
The development of the framework aims to map the landscape of competences and skills in Quantum Technologies thus establishing a common language facilitating communication and cooperation among different stakeholders in the education ecosystem. It is envisioned to be a starting point for planning and structuring a variety of educational and training projects in Quantum Technologies, e.g. master programs at universities, training programs for the industry workforce, or educational research initiatives. A three round Delphi study ans a series of expert interviews were carried, that allowed to formulare first a beta version and then a version 1.0 of the Competence Framework. A report about methodology and version history was published by the European Commission.
6. QTEdu community workshops at EQTC 2021: preparation
The QTEdu CSA is responsible for coordinating a set of three community workshops at the 2021 European Quantum Technologies Conference (EQTC 2021). These workshops will be focused on education and training in quantum technologies in different quantum arenas: schools and outreach, higher education, and industry, respectively. Each workshop is made up of a selection of invited and contributed talks, community discussions, and the leaders of each pilot will present the pilot’s goals and progress. The CSA is also organizing a panel discussion at the end of the conference to discuss the future of quantum technology education with educational and industrial leaders around Europe.
7. Alignment with QUIC, InCoQFlag and QFlag WP4
The QTEdu CSA has strived to have continuous contact and dialog with parallel, relevant activities. There has been overlap between the CSA and QFlag educational representatives which has ensured a close coordination and synergy between the different promised efforts. In addition there has been running contact with the activities of the InCoQFlag CSA through the weekly QFlag CSA coordination meetings and through shared inputs to surveys. The QTEdu CSA has been observer to both the relevant QuIC educational and ecosystem work packages as well as collaborated on obtaining industry community input via shared surveys.
