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Course updates and new learning pathways on IBM Quantum Learning

IBM® is releasing new educational resources on IBM Quantum™ Learning, including the introduction of “learning pathways” for navigating quantum educational content.


23 Oct 2024

Olivia Lanes

Christopher Porter

Jennifer Janechek

Robert Davis

There’s never been a better time to be a student of quantum computing. Today, anyone can run experiments on high-performance utility-scale quantum processors, and thanks to convenient, highly-abstracted software solutions like the Qiskit Functions Catalog and Qiskit Transpiler Service, you don’t need to understand the intricacies of quantum hardware to do it. These advances lower the barrier to entry for exploring interesting and potentially valuable problems using quantum computation.

However, to bring these advances to real quantum computational scientists conducting meaningful research, we have to make sure they have everything they need to get up and running with these powerful quantum technologies. We also have to provide quantum-curious executives with accessible, clear, and concise materials that will help them make informed decisions about how their research organizations should invest in quantum. To achieve these goals and more, we’re introducing some new resources and tools to IBM Quantum Learning, our platform for all things quantum education.

Chief among these additions is the new IBM Quantum Learning pathways, designed to help learners of all experience levels find the best way to progress through the platform’s many courses and tutorials. We’re also giving the public free access to our IBM Quantum Business Foundations course, which was previously available only to our clients and partners in the IBM Quantum Network.

What do these new learning resources mean for you? Let’s take a closer look, starting with the newly introduced IBM Quantum Learning pathways.

Introducing IBM Quantum Learning pathways

IBM unveiled the world’s first publicly accessible, cloud enabled quantum computer in 2016, and since then, we’ve been committed to producing high-quality educational content to enable both our partners and the quantum community as whole. We’ve produced a lot of that content over the years and it isn’t always clear where one should start, or even what their end goal should be. To close that gap, we’re introducing a new concept called Learning pathways for users of our educational platform, IBM Quantum Learning.

Learning pathways are recommended sequences of courses, tutorials, and documentation — all based on an individual’s learning goals. For example, if you don’t have much experience with Qiskit or quantum computing in general, we recommend you follow the Getting started with Qiskit learning pathway. This includes both our Qiskit 101 and Qiskit 102 courses, some relevant documentation, and two simple tutorials. With that done, we feel confident that just about anyone can get started running basic quantum experiments with Qiskit.

We’ve also created learning pathways for those who may be further along in their quantum journey. These include our Understanding quantum information and computation pathway, which takes learners on a deep dive through some of the finer points of quantum information theory, and our Scaling toward quantum utility pathway, which shows users how to build the kind of 100+ qubit experiments that may ultimately yield practical quantum advantage. All learning pathways will be regularly updated as more content becomes available, and as promising new quantum applications emerge.

The pathways mentioned above are all free to use and open to the public through IBM Quantum Learning on IBM Quantum Platform. However, we’ve also created some exclusive content for our partners in the IBM Quantum Network. These include the Quantum computing with physics and chemistry pathway, the Quantum computing for data scientists: algorithms and quantum machine learning pathway, and the Quantum Business Foundations and Applications pathway.

We believe this business-focused learning pathway is especially important now, as we move deeper into the era of quantum utility and as more enterprise organizations begin exploring valuable use cases with quantum computing. That’s why we’re opening up access to the first course in this pathway, Quantum Business Foundations.

IBM Quantum Business Foundations course now open to the public

Most of our learning pathways are designed to provide enablement for developers and computational scientists looking to get started running experiments on real quantum hardware. However, to build a true quantum ecosystem, we also need to enable the business executives and decision makers who may not have deep scientific expertise, but who must help decide where and how research organizations will invest in quantum computing. As part of that effort, we’re pleased to share that our Quantum Business Foundations course, formerly available only to members of the IBM Quantum Network, will now be available to the public through IBM Quantum Learning.

Quantum Business Foundations gives quantum-curious executives a crash course in the fundamentals of quantum computing from a business perspective, with a particular emphasis on understanding the potential business applications of quantum computing. The course is meant to increase overall quantum literacy so learners can have more meaningful conversations about the impact quantum may have both within their organization and in industry as a whole. It enables learners to better assess the opportunities and challenges in quantum computing, and helps learners make more informed decisions about which quantum computing uses cases have the potential to deliver the most business value for them.

This course is a great resource for anyone who would like to get a detailed, layperson-friendly introduction to quantum computing without necessarily diving into linear algebra and circuit construction. That might be someone who works in partnerships or business development for a large research organization, but it could also be a graphic designer or a public relations professional working on quantum-related projects. One of our core goals in designing this course was to make it approachable for those who may have no background in quantum computing or other scientific fields, so this is a great option for anyone who’s curious to know more about quantum computation.

Get started today on IBM Quantum Learning

We hope you’ll use these new learning pathways and newly available Quantum Business Foundations course to further your quantum computing journey, and to get more out of the high-performance utility-scale quantum technology we have today. You can access these resources now on IBM Quantum Platform through IBM Quantum Learning.


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