BLENDED LEARNING IN RESEARCH ORIENTED EDUCATION: TANGLE, AN EDUCATIVE SUITE FOR QUANTUM INFORMATION

Abstract

Quantum information is an emerging area of research which is growing rapidly and which is expecting to have a deep impact in the speed of information processing, storage and security. With only few decades of development, that trend has been highlighted as a remarkable economic focus for the development. Despite, this research area is barely identified in the general society as a source of opportunities for the personal development. The academic development for the most universities reacts slowly to these changes. Their educative programs are normally static with only some late adaptations to the newest technology or knowledge advancement, incorporating them in a limited strength. This research area, normally thought by the common people as proper for physicists, it is really open for lots of disciplines in nowadays. Any area with complex problems unable to be attained by classical computing could technically to be involved in this research trend. Thus, alternative new professional areas are emerging without be sufficiently visible for the universities in order to move the most traditional areas of education. Thus, in the next years, some emergent areas could be eclipsed in terms of human resources. In this arena, blended learning could contribute to provide novel educative contents as an alternative or complementary education to the main professional area selected. While, the blended learning approach is being developed to reach the most sectors of population with professional and university education. Strategies of blended learning are considered remarkable either for formal education as well specialized education to disseminate new trends not included in the traditional syllabus but important for the professional development of students. Because that is the case for Quantum information and Quantum computation areas having an explosive development just in the last decade, this work describes the outcomes around a blended learning initiative in the form of an educative suite for those areas with a multidisciplinary approach containing courses oriented to arrive into the formal research. Still, they are departing from the scientific divulgation until research collaboration going on through the formal learning. Suite was conceptualized with a multilevel approach to attract and to involve students from high school until graduate level.