Ethics education in the quantum information science classroom: Exploring attitudes, barriers, and opportunities
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
- Page Count
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16
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--40456
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/40456
- Download Count
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214
Paper Authors
Josephine Meyer University of Colorado Boulder
Josephine Meyer is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow with the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research centers on improving the equity and effectiveness of emerging interdisciplinary quantum information science (QIS) coursework. She is particularly passionate about incorporating ethics and social responsibility into the physics and engineering curriculum and sees the recent proliferation of QIS coursework as a rare opportunity to build ethics into a new area of engineering education from the beginning.
Bethany Wilcox University of Colorado Boulder
Bethany Wilcox is a member of the Physics Education Research group. Her research interests include understanding and addressing students' difficulties utilizing sophisticated mathematical tools and techniques in the context of physics problem solving. In addition to investigating students' difficulties in the context of a single course, she is also interested in understanding how these difficulties change longitudinally as students advance through the curriculum and encounter these mathematical tools in multiple contexts. She is also interested in the development of research-based and validated assessments of student learning that can be used to measure the impact of curricular changes or compare student learning across courses and institutions. In particular, she is utilizing advanced testing theories to explore viable options for creating modular assessments that can address variations in content coverage in across courses.
Noah Finkelstein University of Colorado Boulder
Abstract
Quantum information science (QIS) is an emerging interdisciplinary field at the intersection of physics, computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics leveraging the laws of quantum mechanics to circumvent classical limitations on information processing. With QIS coursework proliferating across US institutions, including at the undergraduate level, we argue that it is imperative that ethics and social responsibility be incorporated into QIS education from the beginning. We discuss ethical issues of particular relevance to QIS education that educators may wish to incorporate into their curricula. We then report on findings from focus interviews with six faculty who have taught introductory QIS courses, focusing on barriers to and opportunities for incorporation of ethics and social responsibility (ESR) into the QIS classroom. Few faculty had explicitly considered discussion of ethical issues in the classroom prior to the interview, yet instructor attitudes shifted markedly in support of incorporating ESR in the classroom as a result of the interview process itself. Taking into account faculty's perception of obstacles to discussing issues of ESR in coursework, we propose next steps toward making ESR education in the QIS classroom a reality.
Meyer, J., & Wilcox, B., & Finkelstein, N. (2022, August), Ethics education in the quantum information science classroom: Exploring attitudes, barriers, and opportunities Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40456
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