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Affordances and challenges of incorporating a remote, cloud-accessible
quantum experiment into undergraduate courses
Victoria Borish *,†and H. J. Lewandowski
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
and JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado,
Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
(Received 31 October 2024; accepted 24 February 2025; published 3 April 2025)
As quantum technologies transition from the research laboratory into commercial development, the
opportunities for students to begin their careers in this new quantum industry are increasing. With these
new career pathways, more and more people are considering the best ways to educate students about
quantum concepts and relevant skills. In particular, the quantum industry is looking for new employees
with experimental skills, but the instructional labs, capstone projects, research experiences, and internships
that provide experiences where students can learn these skills are often resource intensive and not available
at all institutions. The quantum company, Infleqtion, recently made its online quantum matter machine,
Oqtant, publicly available, so people around the world could send commands to create and manipulate
Bose-Einstein condensates and receive back real experimental data. Making a complex quantum
experiment accessible to anyone has the potential to extend the opportunity to work with quantum
experiments to students at less-resourced institutions. As a first step in understanding the potential benefits
of using such a platform in educational settings, we collected data from instructors and students who were
interested in using, or had used, Oqtant. In this study, we investigate instructors’views about reasons they
would like to use Oqtant and the challenges they would face in doing so. We also provide a concrete
example of how Oqtant was used in an upper-division undergraduate quantum mechanics course and the
instructor’s perception of its benefits. We complement this with the student perspective, discussing student
experiences interacting with Oqtant in their course or through think-aloud interviews outside of a course.
This allows us to investigate the reasons students perceive Oqtant to be a real experiment even though they
never physically interact with it, how Oqtant compares to their other experimental experiences, and what
they enjoy about working with it. These results will help the community consider the potential value of
creating more opportunities for students to access remote quantum experiments.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.21.010133
I. INTRODUCTION
Because of the increasing prevalence of quantum tech-
nologies, the United States and other countries are putting
many resources into educating students about quantum
information science and engineering (QISE) [1–3].
Educational efforts at different levels are already underway,
not only to add more modern topics to the physics
curriculum, but also to better prepare students for, and
broaden access to, quantum careers [4–11]. This education
may include both conceptual learning of key topics in
addition to skill development, which will help students
learn how to work with the different experimental platforms
used in quantum technologies [12–15].
Although experimental skills are an important part of all
physics students’undergraduate education [16,17] and are
valued by employers in the quantum industry [10–12],
opportunities to learn these skills are not available to all
students. Quantum companies are looking for students with
technical skills, including both specific hands-on skills
such as aligning lasers and skills that span various exper-
imental platforms such as coding, data analysis, and
troubleshooting [11,12]. There are various ways for under-
graduate students to learn experimental skills including lab
courses, capstone projects, research experiences (traditional
or course based [18–20]), and internships. These experi-
ences also provide opportunities for students to engage in
authentic scientific practices [21–24]. However, all of these
options are resource intensive. There are often more
interested students than intern or research positions, and
even lab courses require significant funds and instructor
*Present address: Department of Physics, Colorado School of
Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA.
†Contact author: victoria.borish@mines.edu
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to
the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation,
and DOI.
PHYSICAL REVIEW PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH 21, 010133 (2025)
2469-9896=25=21(1)=010133(25) 010133-1 Published by the American Physical Society
expertise to be able to include quantum experiments that are
at the forefront of modern technologies [10]. As part of the
many calls to reduce barriers to participation in QISE
[2,25–27], there is a need to increase student access to
quantum experiments.
One option to teach relevant experimental skills to a wide
set of students is to use remote, cutting-edge quantum
experiments. In the fall of 2023, the quantum company,
Infleqtion, made publicly available their online Bose-
Einstein condensate (BEC) [28] experiment, which anyone
with an Internet connection can use to create and manipu-
late quantum matter. This experimental platform provides
users the opportunity to control the experimental apparatus
and receive and analyze data in a manner similar to that
which is done in modern research labs [29]. Oqtant,
therefore, has the possibility to provide students the
opportunity to learn experimental skills relevant to the
quantum industry such as controlling an ultracold atom
experiment or measuring and analyzing quantum states.
There have been recent efforts to make physics experiments
accessible to anyone with an Internet connection [30–32],
and Oqtant is one of the first examples of a publicly available
quantum experiment that does not abstract away all elements
of the hardware. Although the future of Oqtant as a
commercially sustainable product is uncertain, it is important
to investigate educational experiences with Oqtant as an
example of the utility of remote quantum experiments to
educate physics students and the quantum workforce.
Since Oqtant provides a new type of educational oppor-
tunity, we investigate broadly theaffordances and challenges
that come with using the platform in an undergraduate
course, considering the perspectives of both instructors
and students. We surveyed instructors interested in using
Oqtant in their courses and interviewed one instructor who
had incorporated Oqtant into their course to answer the
following research questions:
I1. What learning goals would instructors have for incor-
porating Oqtant into their courses?
I2. What challenges would instructors face when imple-
menting Oqtant in their courses?
I3. What kinds of support would instructors need to
implement Oqtant in their courses?
We additionally detail one implementation of Oqtant in an
upper-division quantum mechanics course as a concrete
example, answering the research questions:
I4. How could Oqtant be implemented in an undergradu-
ate quantum mechanics course?
I5. What were the instructor’s perceived outcomes of
using Oqtant in a quantum mechanics course?
To obtain the student perspective, we performed think-
aloud interviews outside of a course setting and addition-
ally studied course materials from students in the quantum
mechanics course described in questions I4 and I5. These
data sources allow us to answer the following research
questions:
S1. Do students feel like they are working with a real
experiment while working with Oqtant?
S2. How does Oqtant compare with other experimental
experiences students have had?
S3. What do students enjoy and not enjoy about working
with Oqtant?
This study is not an evaluation of the students or the course;
rather, the combined data from all of these questions allow
us to understand the potential opportunities and difficulties
of using Oqtant for educational purposes. We hope this
example of our developed educational materials and the
way they were implemented in an upper-division course
along with the consequent research results will help the
community consider the implications of using remote
quantum experiments to make quantum education more
accessible and guide future research into the efficacy of this
approach.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II,
we provide additional background information about the
demand for students with experimental quantum skills,
low-resource alternatives to quantum experiments, and the
experimental platform Oqtant. We then detail our method-
ology including the various data sources, data analysis
techniques, and limitations of this study in Sec. III. Next,
we present the results in Sec. IV, broken into instructor
perceptions of using Oqtant, one concrete implementation,
and student perceptions. Finally, we conclude in Sec. V,
summarizing our results and discussing how to sustainably
create opportunities for remote quantum experiments in
educational settings.
II. BACKGROUND
Although there has been education research on student
learning of quantum mechanics for decades, only recently
has there been a focus on student learning of QISE [5,33,34]
and the needs of the quantum workforce [6,12–15].Mostof
the research on student learning focuses on students’con-
ceptual understanding, even though there is a recognized
need to provide students experiences with quantum experi-
ments [10,35]. In this section, we discuss the importance of
quantum experimental skills to the quantum industry and the
hands-on quantum experiences that are already being incor-
porated into undergraduate courses. We then describe less
resource-intensive options to help students learn about
quantum experiments, including simulations, virtual labs,
and remote experiments. Finally, we describe the capabilities
of Oqtant and the ways students can interact with it.
A. Quantum experimental skills
The utility of students interacting with quantum experi-
ments has shown up both in discussions of students interested
in pursuing a career in the quantum industry [7,10–13] and
within typical undergraduate courses [35–38].Forexample,
many quantum companies value experimental skills more
BORISH and LEWANDOWSKI PHYS. REV. PHYS. EDUC. RES. 21, 010133 (2025)
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than a detailed understanding of quantum theory when
looking for new hires [11,12]. Companies cite a wide variety
of beneficial experimental skills, including ones that require
students to work hands-on with an apparatus, such as
aligning laser systems or working with electronics [10–13].
Other relevant skills, such as programming to control the
experimental apparatus, collecting and analyzing data, and
documenting and reporting [11,12], may not require hands-
on interaction with the apparatus. Since quantum technol-
ogies involve a wide variety of experimental platforms, it can
also be useful to provide students opportunities to practice
with different types of platforms, including ultracold neutral
atoms [10].
Students can obtain hands-on experiences with quan-
tum experiments through lab courses, capstone projects,
research experiences, or internships. Various quantum
experiments are already incorporated into many tradi-
tional quantum mechanics or upper-division lab courses
[39]. One example is a popular set of quantum optics
experiments [36,40,41] that is often used to teach students
various lab skills including optical alignment and data
acquisition and analysis [42]. These experiments have
been shown to produce other positive student outcomes
such as confirming students’beliefs that quantum
mechanics describes the physical world [35], improving
students’conceptual understanding, and motivating stu-
dents to pursue a career in quantum optics or quantum
information [36]. Quantum industry senior capstone
courses are being created [43], but research on skills
students develop in them is ongoing. We are not aware of
other research specifically studying the extent to which
students have gained experimental skills from quantum
research experiences or internships, although they would
likely be similar to those of undergraduate research
experiences or internships in general [44].
Although these hands-on experiences provide benefits
to students, there are also various barriers to their
implementation, leading to them not being available to
all students. These barriers include the need for often
expensive equipment, the necessary infrastructure to
support the experiments, sufficient time for instructors
or mentors to prepare for and support their students, and
instructor expertise during development and maintenance
of the experiment [10,11]. These challenges can also make
it difficult to scale the use of experiments to large class
sizes [10,11]. Some studies have proposed remote experi-
ments as an alternative to in-person experiments when
they are not available [7,10], including experiments with
BECs that require substantial local expertise [10,29].The
significant resources needed to provide students exposure
to quantum experiments, along with the importance of the
skills students could gain from working with them, make
it important to investigate methods of teaching these skills
with fewer resources.
B. Less resource-intensive alternatives
to quantum experiments
There have been many interactive simulations created to
teach students concepts related to quantum experiments
without the need for experimental apparatus [45–49]. There
is existing evidence that engaging with simulations can
improve students’conceptual understanding of quantum
topics [47–50]. While many of these simulations focus on
one specific type of experimental context (e.g., a Stern-
Gerlach apparatus or a Mach-Zehnder interferometer),
there are other types called “virtual labs”that simulate
results of experimental setups students design in the
simulation. For example, students can begin with the
virtual equivalent of an empty optical breadboard and
place various optical elements (such as lasers, waveplates,
beamsplitters, and detectors) to design custom quantum
optics experiments [51,52]. These simulations allow stu-
dents to visualize aspects of physics that are impossible to
visualize in actual experiments and are easily scalable for
large class sizes [52]. However, simulations do not provide
students opportunities to gain hands-on skills such as
optical alignment, although students could learn the roles
of each piece of equipment, how to decide which pieces of
equipment are needed in a given experiment, and data
analysis techniques [9]. We are not aware of any studies
specifically investigating experimental skills students gain
with these simulations, as there are no standard methods of
assessing many types of experimental skills.
Another less resource-intensive method of including
ideas from quantum experiments into courses is to incor-
porate photos and videos of an actual apparatus and real
experimental data into student activities. This requires
educators to have access to one version of the apparatus
in order to develop the materials, but the physical apparatus
is not needed after that so activities can easily be scaled for
many students. Video clips of a collection of real data
combined with simulations have been shown to improve
students’quantum reasoning about concepts such as
interference [53]. Interactive screen versions of quantum
optics experiments [54], which allow students some choice
in experimental parameters, although they still see prere-
corded data, have been shown to help students avoid using
deterministic reasoning about quantum objects [55]. These
options allow students to obtain real experimental data that
they have some control over while decreasing the required
resources to only a single apparatus that could exist at a
different institution. These activities have been used pri-
marily to improve students’conceptual learning [53,55];
however, similar activities may be able to improve students’
data analysis skills and views about how knowledge comes
from experimental observations.
Some institutions have also converted their previously
in-person quantum experiments to be able to be accessed
remotely [56,57]. These experiments allow students to
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remotely control various components of the instructional
lab hardware via the Internet, and the students can see the
effects of their actions on the apparatus via live feeds from
cameras in the lab. Compared with interactive screen
experiments, remote experiments provide students more
options for how they interact with the experiment (as the
settings they choose need not be already measured by an
educator), but they do not allow for a large number of
students to work with them concurrently. Compared with
in-person experiments, remote experiments more easily
allow multiple groups to work with the same experiment
sequentially, may decrease student concerns about breaking
equipment, and increase access for students who are not
able to physically be in the lab at a given time. Remote labs
may also provide students the opportunity to learn how to
design experimental procedures and troubleshoot experi-
ments remotely [56].
Quantum industry also provides access to some remote
quantum experiments via publicly accessible cloud quan-
tum computers (e.g., Refs. [32,58,59]). These have begun
appearing in educational programs, including informal
education for high school students [60,61], an online global
summer school [62,63], and undergraduate and graduate
courses [61,64]. The various quantum computers have
different price structures, interfaces, and provided tutorials
and educational materials, varying the ease of use for
students. In addition to teaching students about quantum
computing topics, cloud quantum computers can be used to
teach about a variety of other quantum topics, such as
testing Bell’s Inequality [64] and modeling quantum
sensors [65]. Although educational experiences with quan-
tum computers provide students experience with authentic
quantum devices, many of the educational materials created
to use with them focus more on quantum concepts than
experimental skills.
C. The cloud-accessible quantum
matter experiment, Oqant
Oqtant is the only publicly available quantum experiment
hosted by a quantum company that is not a quantum
computer of which we are aware. Unlike quantum com-
puters, where users may think entirely in terms of quantum
circuits without knowledge of the underlying hardware,
Oqtant emphasizes the system under study, a BEC, and
allows users to set values for the controls available with the
hardware. A BEC is a state of matter in which the constituent
atoms of a gas have been cooled until a largefraction of them
enter the lowest-energy state. At that point, the interparticle
spacing is comparable to the de Broglie wavelength, so the
atoms act as a single macroscopic quantum object and exhibit
quantum properties such as interference [66]. Oqtant there-
fore provides users a unique opportunity to engage with, and
visualize, fundamental physics while working with an
experimental platform similar to some types of modern
quantum technologies [29].
Oqtant can be accessed from almost anywhere via the
Internet, while the hardware resides in the quantum
company Infleqtion’s office in Colorado. The apparatus
itself has similar features to that of many other BEC
experiments in research labs around the world [67–69],
but it has been optimized for the required stability, low
maintenance, and automation needed for it to be available
to the public. A photo of the apparatus can be seen in Fig. 1,
where the optics are compact and all of the electronics and
lasers are placed in racks. The purpose of Oqtant is to
provide researchers and educators a platform they can use
to access ultracold atoms without the money and time it
takes to build such an experiment themselves [29].
In an experimental run with Oqtant, rubidium atoms in
an ultrahigh vacuum chamber undergo various cooling and
trapping stages, with the users controlling the final stages.
FIG. 1. Photos of (a) the entire Oqtant apparatus and (b) a close-up of the optics surrounding the vacuum chamber in which the atoms
are located. Photos taken by the Oqtant team.
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At the start of each run, the atoms are cooled and trapped
with lasers and a magnetic field. The final cooling stage,
evaporative cooling in a magnetic trap, is where users are
first allowed to control the experimental parameters. Users
have the option to adjust the frequency, power, and time
intervals of a sequence of applied radio frequency radiation
that cools the atoms to the point where some begin to form
a BEC. Users can either image the BEC immediately or
wait until after applying a spatially localized far-detuned
laser, which repels atoms from the regions with that optical
field. This can be used, for example, to split the BEC into
different sub-ensembles of BECs. Users can decide to
image the atoms while the atoms remain in the magnetic
trap or they can release the atoms from the trap and image
them after the atoms have expanded for a variable amount
of time [29]. The images of the atoms provide the atomic
density profile, which allows for calculations of the temper-
ature of the atoms, the total number of atoms, and the
number of atoms that have formed a BEC. These features
allow users to investigate topics related to fundamental
quantum phenomena including superposition, interference,
and tunneling [29,66].
There are two ways users can access Oqtant, either with a
web application or a
PYTHON
application programming
interface (API). The web application is easier to use, and
the
PYTHON
API allows for additional ways to control the
experiment. Through either method, users submit “jobs”
that contain the experimental parameters they want to run
on the experiment. These jobs enter a queue and run when
the experiment is online. Once a job has been completed,
the user can access it to obtain the resulting image of the
atoms (as a visual image or a matrix) along with the basic
data analysis provided by Oqtant (the calculated atom
number and temperature). Infleqtion provides sample
Jupyter notebooks containing tutorials and demonstrations
to help new users and offers various methods of support
(e.g., by email or Slack) if users run across issues [29].
Anyone can obtain a free account by signing up on
Oqtant’s website, but jobs can only be run when the
experiment is online. Since Oqtant was first online in fall
2023, users with free accounts have had access to between
10 and 20 jobs per day (with a maximum of 100 jobs per
month). Users who wanted additional jobs could purchase
more, which increases their daily limit and designates them
as priority jobs that jump to the front of the queue. In its
first year, Oqtant was online from 10 am to 3 pm Mountain
time on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays every other
week. In September 2024, Oqtant announced it would
indefinitely pause its services beginning November 2024,
and it is unknown if and when it will be available again in
the future.
III. METHODOLOGY
In order to study a cloud-accessible quantum experiment,
which is novel both in terms of the technology itself and the
opportunities for education and education research, we
collected and analyzed several different types of data from
various perspectives. This allows us to provide a broad
overview of the possibilities of using Oqtant in an educa-
tional setting, so future research can narrow in on more
specific details of implementations. We begin this section
detailing the data sources we used, which come from
instructors interested in using Oqtant in their courses, as
well as an instructor and students who worked with Oqtant
using educational materials we developed. We then discuss
how these data were analyzed with a thematic analysis,
looking for the existence of themes. Finally, we discuss the
limitations of this study and how those limitations con-
tributed to the emphasis in our analysis on investigating
educational possibilities.
A. Data collection
We used several different data sources to answer our
research questions, which are summarized in Table I.In
order to study student experiences with an experiment like
Oqtant in a course, we needed to develop educational
activities that could be used by the students. To determine
the structure of activities that would fit into existing
courses, we surveyed instructors about their interest in
using Oqtant in their courses. The data from this survey
were used both to develop the student activities and to
answer some of our research questions. Once the activities
were developed, we performed think-aloud interviews with
students using these activities both to improve the activities
and to understand student experiences while working with
Oqtant. We then implemented the finalized activities in an
upper-division quantum mechanic course. Reflection ques-
tions on the students’completed activities, along with an
TABLE I. Data sources used in this study with the number of participants and their institution type for each part along with the
research questions (RQs) each were used to answer. The students were enrolled either at research-intensive R1 institutions or a primarily
undergraduate institution (PUI).
Data source Participants and institutions RQs
Instructor survey 29 instructors from 28 institutions I1–I3
Instructor interview 1 instructor at a Hispanic-serving PUI I1–I5
Sets of students’completed activities 5 students at R1 institutions, 7 students at a PUI S1–S2
Student think-aloud interviews 5 students at R1 institutions S1–S3
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interview of the instructor, provided us information about
the use of Oqtant within a course setting.
1. Instructor survey
We recruited instructors for the instructor survey through
a variety of methods, including via email and conversations
at conferences. We posted a link to the survey in the
newsletter of the Advanced Physics Lab Association
(ALPhA) [70], asking for responses from instructors
teaching upper-division quantum mechanics courses,
beyond-first-year (BFY) lab courses, or any other courses
in which Oqtant could be incorporated. We additionally
emailed 164 instructors who we knew were interested in
hands-on quantum optics experiments, many of whom
were connected to ALPhA in some way. We also presented
a poster about our upcoming project with Oqtant (including
a QR code to the survey) at the Conference on Laboratory
Instruction Beyond the First Year and the American
Association of Physics Teachers Summer Meeting in the
summer of 2023.
In total, 29 instructors from 28 unique institutions
completed the survey. Of these institutions, six are four-
year colleges, eight are master’s degree granting institu-
tions, 13 are Ph.D. granting institutions (including four that
are international), and we do not have information about the
remaining one. One instructor submitted two responses,
one each for two separate courses they teach, and one
instructor submitted a single response for multiple disparate
courses.
The survey contained both open- and closed-response
questions about the ways in which instructors would
consider implementing Oqtant in their courses. These
questions covered topics such as the courses in which
instructors would want to use Oqtant, the amount of time
they would be willing to dedicate to Oqtant, the learning
outcomes they hope their students would achieve while
working with Oqtant, their students’current knowledge
about BECs, the concerns they have about implementing
Oqtant in their course, and the support they would need to
do so. The instructors were not familiar with Oqtant prior to
filling out the survey, so we included a brief description of
Oqtant along with links to access the platform at the start of
the survey. The exact wording of the questions asked, as
well as our description of Oqtant, is provided in the
Supplemental Material [71].
2. Educational materials developed
We used responses to the instructor survey to aid in the
development of educational materials that could fit into a
variety of undergraduate courses. We designed the activ-
ities to be incorporated into upper-division lab or quantum
mechanics courses, assuming minimal student prior knowl-
edge of BECs. We did assume that students would have a
basic knowledge of programming in
PYTHON
including
generating basic plotting commands, using for loops, and
slightly adjusting already-written code. We developed a
sequence of two activities, each designed to take students
two to three hours to complete, with preparation activities
students could work through on their own for around half
an hour beforehand.
We employed educational best practices in the develop-
ment of these activities [72]. Each of the activities and
preparation activities included explicit learning goals, so
the students would know what they were expected to learn
from the activities [73]. To encourage students to actively
engage with the materials, we included questions at various
points throughout the preparation activities to which
students needed to provide a written response. We addi-
tionally added some metacognitive reflection questions
throughout the activities to help with student sensemaking,
as well as at the end of each activity to encourage the
students to think more broadly about their overall experi-
ence working with Oqtant. Although these activities needed
to be somewhat structured because of the complexity of
Oqtant, we provided students opportunities to make some
decisions, such as the requested temperature of the atoms
and the number of runs they took. We created two
structured activities with the plan that they could be
followed by a student-designed open-ended project.
Development of the two activities was an iterative
process, where we went back and forth between the desired
learning outcomes and the capabilities of, and data pro-
duced by, Oqtant. Our initial learning goals were chosen
based on the results from the instructor survey and our
knowledge of experimental atomic physics and BECs.
Extensive time experimenting with Oqtant allowed us to
refine the learning goals so they would be feasible in a short
period of time with a limited number of experimental runs.
Both of the activities were structured as Jupyter notebooks
in which the students could submit runs to Oqtant, analyze
the resulting data, and respond to the reflection questions.
The associated preparation activities consisted of a few
pages of background reading, around four related questions
to which the students needed to submit short responses and
short Jupyter notebooks the students could run to ensure
their
PYTHON
connection was working. The final versions
of our developed activities can be found in Ref. [74].
The first activity guides students to learn about absorp-
tion imaging of ultracold atoms (the process used to
produce the images returned to the user by Oqtant) and
understand how to use the images to obtain properties of
the atoms. Students begin by analyzing already-taken data
from Oqtant, using 2D Gaussian fits of the imaged atoms to
obtain the number of imaged atoms and the temperature of
the atomic cloud. Then, students have the opportunity to
submit runs to Oqtant themselves, choosing a set of
requested temperatures for the atoms. At the end of this
activity, students may submit jobs that create BECs, but the
focus is on understanding how to detect ultracold atoms and
determine their properties.
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In the second activity, students focus on the creation, and
some of the quantum aspects, of BECs. They begin by
comparing the Gaussian fits they had been using in the first
activity with bimodal fits, which better fit the atoms when a
BEC is present, allowing them to consider different regimes
and decide when one model works better than the other.
Using Oqtant’s built-in functionality, students then find the
critical temperature, the temperature at which a BEC starts
to form. They additionally investigate the parameters sent
to the hardware for the final cooling stage, thereby making
a connection between the frequency of the applied radio
frequency radiation and the final temperature of the atoms.
Finally, the students compare the aspect ratio of a BEC
versus a noncondensed cloud of atoms after different
expansion times.
3. Think-aloud interviews
Once the first versions of the educational activities with
Oqtant were completed, we began testing them with
students using think-aloud interviews [75]. These inter-
views occurred over Zoom while Oqtant was online, so the
students could submit jobs and receive the results during
the interview. All the students performed two think-aloud
interviews, one for each of the activities, and additionally
completed the respective preparation activities ahead of
time. The think-aloud portions of the interviews were used
to improve the activities, for example by rewording any
parts that were confusing. We also included some regular
interview questions after the students had completed the
activities, and students' responses to those questions were
used to answer our research questions about student
experiences.
We attempted to recruit students from various institu-
tions and ended up with five students from two institutions
who completed the sequence of think-aloud interviews. We
advertised this opportunity to the second-semester quantum
mechanics course at our own institution, as well as to 14
instructors we knew from the survey or through personal
connections, prioritizing instructors at institutions that were
less likely to have access to in-person atomic physics
experiments. The students who signed up were enrolled at
two different institutions: two were enrolled in a primarily
white R1 institution and the other three were enrolled in a
Hispanic-serving R1 institution. Of the five students, four
identified as men and one as a woman. Two are white, one
is Asian, and two are both white and Asian. All of the
students were in their last or second to last year of their
undergraduate studies, had taken at least one programming
class, and had taken a quantum mechanics course or
participated in a quantum research experience.
A week prior to each think-aloud interview, the students
were sent the preparation activities. These were intended to
last between 15–30 min, although some of the students
spent longer on the first one because it included the
installation of Oqtant’s Python package, which was a
challenge for many students. Students recorded responses
to the preparation activity questions and emailed them to us
before the think-aloud interviews.
During the think-aloud interviews, students spent
approximately 2 h working through the activities with
Oqtant while screen sharing their Jupyter notebook over
Zoom. During this time, the interviewer prompted the
students to explain their reasoning if they were not explain-
ing what they were doing out loud and also answered the
students’questions about the activity, as an instructor
would. Many of the student questions related to
PYTHON
code, so all of these questions were answered as students’
coding ability was not the focus of our study and we wanted
to ensure students could finish the activities in the allotted
time. After the think-aloud portion, students were asked up
to 15 min of additional questions related to potential
learning outcomes and were also given the chance to
suggest changes to the activities (see Ref. [71] for the
exact questions). Students were compensated with gift
cards for their time.
The data we collected during these think-aloud inter-
views consist of students’responses to the preparation
activity questions, students’completed Jupyter notebooks,
and the transcripts of the interviews. From the notebooks,
we analyzed only student responses to the broad reflection
questions at the end. We also focused on the end portion of
the think-aloud interviews, where the students discussed
their responses to the concluding reflection questions and
answered some additional questions after completing the
activities.
4. Course implementation
In parallel to performing the think-aloud interviews, we
began discussing the implementation of these activities
with an upper-division quantum mechanics course instruc-
tor. We partnered with an instructor with whom we had
previously connected about quantum education and who
had directly expressed interest in using our activities with
Oqtant. This instructor wanted to include Oqtant in their
upper-division quantum mechanics course at a Hispanic-
serving primarily undergraduate institution. We had various
conversations with them early on in the Spring 2024
semester to ensure these activities aligned with their
intended learning goals. We provided the instructor the
updated activities, as we had made some small changes to
them after the think-aloud interviews. We additionally were
in contact with the instructor as the activities were being
implemented to answer a few additional questions the
instructor had. The details of how these activities were
incorporated into the course are discussed in Sec. IV B 1.
Our data from the course consist of student course
materials related to Oqtant from the majority of the students
in the course, as well as an instructor interview. There were
12 students enrolled in the course, mostly seniors who were
going to graduate at the end of that semester or the
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following one. Seven of the students gave us permission to
use their course materials in this study, so we have seven
sets of responses to the preparation activities and Jupyter
notebooks. We attempted to interview the students at the
end of the course to ask questions similar to what we did at
the end of the think-aloud interviews, but none of the
students signed up. We were able to interview the instruc-
tor, so our dataset also contains the transcript of an hour-
long Zoom interview with the instructor that occurred soon
after the end of the course.
B. Data analysis
We analyzed the student and instructor data separately.
For the closed-response instructor survey questions, we
divided the responses by course type (see Ref. [71] for
details) and present instructor views about a total of 31
courses. For the open-response survey questions, reflection
questions, and interview data, we performed thematic
coding analyses [76,77] to identify themes across the
participants, with discussions between the authors through-
out the process to refine the themes and agree on the
classification of the quotes. For the instructor data, this
consisted of identifying themes in the survey data, and then
searching for those and other emergent themes in the
instructor interview. These themes are presented in
Tables II and III. For the student data, we performed a
thematic analysis of the interview transcripts and activity
reflection questions from all 12 students. We chose to
combine the student data from the think-aloud interviews
and the quantum mechanics course because both sets of
students worked through the same activities with Oqtant
and our research questions do not depend on the specific
context in which the activities were performed. Since our
sample size is relatively small, we focus our analysis on the
existence of themes instead of their prevalence. These
themes are presented in Tables V–VII.
To explain the students’and instructors’ideas, we chose
the most representative or insightful quotes to present in
this paper. There were misspelled words in some of the
students’written responses, so we corrected those to
minimize distraction. Because we do not have demographic
information from all participants and to protect their
anonymity, we use gender neutral pronouns for everyone.
C. Limitations
The primary limitation of this study is the small sample
size of students. Although we tried to recruit more students
for the think-aloud interviews, we could schedule the
interviews only when Oqtant was online, which limited
both the number of time slots we had available and the
students who were free during those times. Some students
may have had courses or other responsibilities that limited
their ability to commit to at least 2 h during the school
week. The majority of the students in the quantum
mechanics course provided permission to use their course
materials, although we were not able to obtain data from the
entire class. However, all of the claims in this paper are
about the existence of ideas students may have, so although
we are likely missing some ideas from students who were
not able to participate in this study, the data here present
valuable insights from a subset of students. The details of the
students and the quantum mechanics course provided in
Secs. III A 3,III A 4,andIV B 1 can help identify how these
results may generalize to other populations of students
[78,79], keeping in mind that our analysis combines the
ideas of students in the think-aloud interviews and the course.
Future work can investigate how the themes we identified
may differ across disparate populations of students.
Additionally, we studied student experiences with only
one set of activities, which required students to have at least
some prior knowledge of programming in
PYTHON
.We
designed our research questions and focused our analysis
on themes in the data that did not depend on the specific
activities with which the students engaged; however, it is
not possible to completely separate student experiences
with Oqtant from the specific implementation. We have no
reason to believe that some of the general themes we found
in our data would be unique to the way the students in our
study interacted with Oqtant, so we hope this study will
motivate future work to better understand a wider range of
student experiences with remote quantum experiments.
From the instructor side, all of the survey responses came
from instructors who had not yet used Oqtant in their
courses, whereas the interview came from an instructor
who had already used Oqtant. It is important to understand
the perspectives of both instructors who might use Oqtant,
but have not yet (to understand why or why not instructors
would consider incorporating a novel experiment like
Oqtant into their courses), and instructors who have used
Oqtant in their courses (to understand whether the per-
ceived challenges and support needed went as expected or
whether new challenges occurred). Because there was only
one instructor who had used Oqtant, we combined
responses from the survey with the instructor interview
when presenting the results in Sec. IVA.
Finally, as with any research project, our backgrounds
and experiences likely shaped the design and analysis of
this study. Both of us worked on atomic physics experi-
ments during our Ph.D.s, so we are familiar with similar
types of apparatus, experimental techniques, and quantum
concepts as those used by Oqtant. H. J. L. additionally has
direct experience creating BECs in a lab. Our familiarity
with atomic physics research influenced the topics we
chose to include in the Oqtant educational activities, as well
as our interpretations of instructor and student responses.
IV. RESULTS
In this section, we present the results of this study,
discussing both instructor and student perspectives of
working with Oqtant for educational purposes. We begin
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with a subsection about instructor perceptions, including
instructors’learning goals, the challenges they anticipated
facing, and the support they would need to use Oqtant in
their courses. To demonstrate that these challenges are not
insurmountable, we next describe one specific course
implementation where Oqtant was incorporated into an
upper-division quantum mechanics course. We include
both the details of the implementation and the instructor’s
perception of how they and their students benefited from
working with Oqtant. We then switch to the student
perspective, describing how Oqtant felt like a real experi-
ment to the students even though they never interacted with
it physically; comparisons students made between Oqtant
and other experiments they know about, including benefits
and drawbacks stemming from it being remote; and the
parts of working with Oqtant the students enjoyed and did
not enjoy. Together, these data provide an overview of
possibilities and challenges for incorporating a remote
quantum experiment like Oqtant into educational settings.
A. Instructor perceptions of Oqtant
Oqtant provides instructors with a potentially novel way
to focus on different types of learning outcomes, yet also
comes with its own set of challenges. Drawing on both the
survey results of many instructors considering using Oqtant
in their courses and the interview of one instructor after
having incorporated Oqtant in one of their courses, we see
that instructors care not only about their students learning
concepts but also about experimental skills and noncogni-
tive aspects. However, instructors also discuss many
challenges they anticipate encountering. Some of these
can be mitigated with help from outside educators through
the development of educational materials for students and
training materials for instructors, although there are some
challenges that are inherent to working with a platform like
Oqtant or would require additional support from instruc-
tors’own institutions.
1. Learning goals
Instructors have a variety of reasons for wanting to
incorporate Oqtant into their courses. When asked on the
survey to rank the importance of learning quantum con-
cepts, generating excitement, working with research-level
equipment, and preparing for the quantum workforce, the
majority of instructors ranked all four reasons as at least
somewhat important for their courses [see Fig. 2(a)]. The
only reason considered not important for a small percentage
of courses was preparing students for the quantum work-
force. However, for the majority of the courses, instructors
still regarded this as a somewhat or very important reason.
An experiment like Oqtant can be used in the classroom for
many different types of educational goals, and instructors
often want their students to accomplish many of these
concurrently.
When asked about more specific learning goals that
may be possible with Oqtant, instructors were again
interested in incorporating many of these into their courses
[see Fig. 2(b)]. For each course, instructors chose from one
to eight out of eight listed learning goals plus a write-in
option, and there was a mean of five learning goals per
course. The learning goal that the most instructors would be
interested in, and anticipate having time in their course for,
was using Oqtant to demonstrate quantum behavior with
BECs. However, all of the learning goals listed were chosen
for between 16 and 24 courses (out of 31 in total), so all of
the goals were of interest to the majority of the instructors.
Instructors valued additional learning goals not mentioned
on the survey as well, including understanding how theory
and experiment are connected, realizing that experiments
are not textbook-perfect, and developing skills such as data
analysis and computation.
Especially for instructors teaching primarily theory
courses, some wanted to provide their students experiences
with a “concrete experiment”to connect with the “abstract
theory.”When asked about reasons for incorporating
Oqtant into their course, one instructor described the ways
they wanted students to make this connection: they hoped
their students would “correlate theoretical concepts in
quantum physics with experimental setups, analyze exper-
imental results using theoretical models, and evaluate the
predictions of the theory based on experimental observa-
tions.”Another instructor emphasized the goal of providing
their students an “intro to real-world quantum systems.”
Oqtant is not the only experiment that can provide students
a connection to quantum experiments, but it may provide a
way to do this for institutions without physical experiments
or where instructors do not want their students to spend
time on hands-on experimental aspects.
In addition to seeing the connection to experiments,
another instructor wanted students to learn that experiments
are not ideal and that not everything can be answered by a
textbook. They said,
I like [the students] recognizing experiments
aren’t ideal and…thinking more broadly and
deeply about why things aren’t textbook…so
having students sort of acknowledge and have to
think about things that don’t necessarily have
‘here’s the textbook answer’was something
I really wanted to do.
Oqtant provides students the opportunity to see experi-
mental imperfections and to grapple with questions to
which their instructors do not know the answer, aspects that
are different than the content often covered in quantum
mechanics courses.
It is not just students who could benefit from the
incorporation of Oqtant into courses, but also their instruc-
tors. Instructors can also be excited to work with a new
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platform and want to learn about BECs. When asked why
they wanted to implement activities with Oqtant in their
course, one instructor said,
Because I wanted to learn more about BECs…
Most of the new teaching things I do is like that
sounds interesting, I should know more, I’m
gonna teach a class in it because that’s a great
way to learn. But in a more serious answer, I did
want to learn a lot more about this, and it looked
like a great opportunity.
There are many reasons instructors consider incorporat-
ing Oqtant into their courses, and they often hope to
accomplish multiple distinct learning outcomes with this
experiment. These outcomes include ones typical of nonlab
courses, such as conceptual learning about various topics
including BECs and atom-light interactions, as well as
experimental skills often emphasized in lab courses, such
as data analysis. Instructors also have other broader goals
including generating student excitement about physics or
helping students understand the connection between theory
and experiment. Although more work needs to be done to
study whether or not students accomplish these learning
outcomes while working with Oqtant, instructors believe
there is the potential to address many of them with this
platform. Oqtant may provide some of these benefits not
only for the students but also for instructors, who may also
Students will be able to...
...describe what is a BEC and explain
how it differs from classical matter.
...identify the different parts of the experimental apparatus used
to create a BEC and explain the purpose of each of them.
...explain conceptually how lasers can be
used to cool atoms in different ways.
...optimize the evaporative cooling parameters
to create a BEC with Oqtant.
...analyze data coming from absorption images of atoms.
...explain conceptually how to use light to trap or repel atoms.
...use Oqtant to demonstrate that BECs exhibit quantum
behavior (e.g., interference or collective behavior).
...articulate and discuss various applications of BECs
and ways they are used in modern research.
Help students learn concepts
about quantum mechanics.
Generate student excitement or appreciation
for quantum physics (or physics more broadly).
Provide students the opportunity to
work with research-level experiments.
Prepare students for the quantum workforce.
(a)
(b)
Number of courses
Percent of courses
FIG. 2. Learning goals instructors would value for their students if they were to use Oqtant in their courses. (a) Four broad categories
of possible learning goals with the percent of courses where the instructor indicated that the listed reasons were very (dark blue),
somewhat (light blue), or not (gray) important. (b) Number of courses where the instructors indicated they would be interested in, and
have time to focus on, the specific learning goals in quantum mechanics (light yellow), beyond-first-year (BFY) lab (medium orange), or
other (dark red) courses. The dataset contains 19 BFY lab, 8 quantum mechanics, and 4 other types of courses.
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be excited about working with a novel apparatus and
learning about an area of physics that could be unfamiliar
to them.
2. Challenges
Instructors also discussed a variety of concerns they have
about implementing Oqtant in their courses and ways it
could be challenging. The challenges identified in our
thematic analysis of the instructor data are listed in Table II.
One of the big challenges that instructors have very little
control over is access to Oqtant. If instructors are planning for
students to work with the experiment during a class session,
they need the experiment to be online and functioning well
during that time. One instructor explained this concern,
saying
If the experiment or interface was down, this could
of course cause problems for students. Experimen-
tal issues arise in Advanced Laboratories all the
time, but the time-honored strategies for dealing
with them don’t work as well from a distance.
The instructor would not be able to use their usual strategies
to troubleshoot Oqtant since they have no direct control
over Oqtant’s hardware. It could alternatively be a chal-
lenge for instructors to figure out how to help their students
engage with Oqtant in class sessions during which Oqtant is
not online. Instructors must also figure out how to match
activities with Oqtant with the topics covered in their
course when Oqtant is only online every other week.
Another challenge is that instructors are not necessarily
experts in the topics needed to use and understand Oqtant,
including BECs, experimental atomic physics, and pro-
gramming in
PYTHON
. This can make it difficult for
instructors to easily convey ideas to their students, help
the students when issues arise, and make course decisions
related to the use of Oqtant. For example, when asked how
they had graded the activities with Oqtant, the course
instructor discussed how challenging it was:
[Grading/evaluating the activities] was the hard-
est thing. By far. Because…especially with a
topic like this where it’s not the main center of my
research, I think I understand things at an appro-
priate level and get it, but I don’t necessarily
know…if what I think is important to be covered
is what they do. So I think developing clear
rubrics and all that…was a challenge for me.
It was also a challenge to figure out when in the course to
implement the activities with Oqtant so that they fit with the
content of the course, since the instructor did not have a
complete understanding of the underlying material when
finalizing the syllabus.
The lack of familiarity with BECs and experimental
atomic physics is also relevant for the students, as these
topics are only minimally covered in most undergraduate
physics curricula. One instructor discussed their concern
that they were “not sure which material would be useful,
enough to introduce the subject but not excessive.”This is
especially true for the instructors who were considering
incorporating Oqtant into a BFY lab course where their
students would not necessarily have already taken courses
in quantum mechanics or statistical mechanics. It is an open
question whether Oqtant could be successfully incorpo-
rated into courses where students did not have a prior basic
understanding of the underlying content.
Additionally, the apparatus used in Oqtant is different
than other experiments students have worked with before,
which adds another set of elements the students must learn
during the course. When asked what they would be
concerned about when incorporating Oqtant into their
course, one instructor responded,
The stark difference in apparatus from most of the
other course’s experiments. There tends to be a
high cognitive overload for students due to
having to learn to use new apparatus for many
experiments.
Another instructor also saw this as concerning, not neces-
sarily because it would be too much for the students, but
because the new learning would not allow for any buffer
time if things went wrong. This instructor explained,
My only concern is the amount of ‘overhead’
required to get the system running and familiarize
the students with the system. There will not be
time to go back if something fails during the time
we would be able to dedicate to this activity.
Learning how to work with a new type of experiment,
especially one as complex as Oqtant, requires both time and
cognitive load.
Instructors were also concerned that using Oqtant would
take away time students could spend working with hands-
on experiments. One instructor stated how they would only
use a remote experiment if in-person labs were not an
option:
TABLE II. Challenges instructors face or anticipate facing
when incorporating Oqtant into their courses.
Challenges
Need reliable access to Oqtant during class
Instructors are not experts in topics
Students do not have necessary background knowledge
Experiment different from other common experiments
Could take away from hands-on experiences
Need support for instructors and TAs
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Current students desperately need actual hands-
on experience with experiments–connecting ca-
bles, turning knobs, etc. Even when I introduce
computer control of an experiment on the table in
front of them, I see students missing the fact that
they need to look at / think about the actual
direction the wave plates turn in reality, not just
the numbers on the screen. In a lab course or lab
portion of a course, I would pretty much always
choose to have students do an actual, in-person
experiment (even if it has to be simpler and less
impressive) over a virtual or web-based one. I use
virtual or web-based ‘experiments’like this in
non-lab courses only, or as outside-lab-time
training exercises to go with in-person labs in a
lab course.
Other instructors would consider using a remote experi-
ment as long as their students were able to debug some
aspects of it and have control over parts of the experiment.
For one instructor, part of the challenge was convincing
other faculty of the value of this type of remote experiment:
The hands-on aspect of the laboratory is an
important component of the course. It is hard
to engage other faculty on the value of cloud-
based experimental work…I think a significant
component of the laboratory activity should
include some debugging.
Finally, instructors were also concerned about the need
for training of instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) so
that they would be able to quickly and easily help students
while working with Oqtant. More details about the kind of
support instructors would need to address this and the other
challenges are included in the following subsection.
3. Support needed
Some of the challenges instructors discussed could be
eased through various types of support. The support
instructors requested when asked what they would need
to feel comfortable incorporating Oqtant into their course
are listed in Table III.
Instructors discussed the need for various types of
educational materials for their students. This includes lab
guides or activities, preparation activities for beforehand,
and example homework problems. Some instructors
emphasized that these materials should allow opportunities
for student decision-making and exploration. For example,
one instructor said:
We would probably need help creating a lab
manual for the students that properly walks them
through the experiment at the appropriate level
that leaves space for inquiry and exploration, but
allows [them] to stay within the parameters of the
experiment.
Another requested
A set of questions/hypotheses that can be an-
swered with the [Oqtant] system or a framework
for how students could engage meaningfully with
and understand/test the limitations of the system
they are working with.
When experiments are as complex as Oqtant, lab guides
often end up being relatively guided; however, open-ended
aspects of experiments provide students many benefits
[80–82]. Oqtant has the possibility to provide students
space to explore, and instructors wanted guidance about
manageable ways to do that.
Instructors also wanted materials to help themselves
learn about BECs and the apparatus, as well as other
training opportunities. One instructor said, “The best thing
for me is to have sufficient materials and documentation
and a straightforward access process so I can be as self-
reliant as possible.”In addition to background materials
and good documentation, instructors requested instructor
guides with sample solutions and guidelines on the timing
of the activities. Instructors also asked for various kinds of
training that could include webinars, courses, or work-
shops. At some institutions, there are different instructors
and TAs involved in the relevant course each year, so the
training and support would need to be ongoing.
Along with the provision of sufficient materials, instruc-
tors would need time to work through the activities and
learn about the experimental platform on their own. The
instructor who implemented Oqtant in their course
explained how they would have liked an easier way to
learn the material since they did not have a lot of time to
spend reading references:
I mentioned that one colleague, the lecturer who
did a PhD in atomic physics…and I remember
pinging him, and immediately ‘here’s my grad
level text.’And I was just like…I just need a
draw-me-a-picture sort of thing because I don’t
TABLE III. Themes from the thematic analysis identifying
types of support instructors would need to implement Oqtant in
their courses.
Support needed
Educational materials for students
Background materials for instructors
Training for instructors and TAs
Time to work through activities and learn about Oqtant
A point of contact to answer questions and troubleshoot
Platform for educators to share resources
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have the bandwidth to do a full deep dive…it’s
not a lack or failure of resources or anything. It’s
just time I didn’t have to put into it that I probably
should have.
This instructor points out that useful support could include
either more time (which is often not feasible given many
instructors’workloads) or available references at a differ-
ent level.
Instructors also discussed the importance of various
methods of communication with other educators and
Oqtant staff. They wanted a point of contact (presumably
either the educators who developed the activities or
employees at Infleqtion who work with Oqtant) to help
answer questions or troubleshoot any issues that arise.
Instructors also discussed the idea of a platform where they
could “share resources and discuss their experiences”with
other instructors using Oqtant in their classes. It is not clear
whether this would be best facilitated by the staff working
on Oqtant (e.g., as part of the Oqtant Slack channel) or
through some other forum operated by educators.
Overall, instructors anticipated or experienced various
challenges to working with Oqtant, some of which could be
addressed with the various methods of support discussed in
this section. Some of these support mechanisms (such as
the provision of educational materials and training oppor-
tunities) could be provided by outside educators (i.e., other
instructors or education researchers). However, substantial
resources are needed to sustainably develop and maintain
such materials and opportunities for professional develop-
ment [83].
B. Implementation of Oqtant in a course
In order to help instructors understand how these
challenges can be managed and what learning outcomes
they might expect when Oqtant is implemented in a course,
we present here a concrete example of Oqtant being used in
an upper-division quantum mechanics course. This illus-
trates the way an instructor, who is not an expert in
experimental atomic physics or BECs, was able to fit
two structured activities and a final project with Oqtant into
their course, as well as how they navigated various practical
challenges, such as the way their course time did not match
up with Oqtant’s online hours. Overall, the instructor
enjoyed implementing Oqtant in their course, thought their
students met their learning goals related to engaging with
authentic scientific experiences and would like to imple-
ment Oqtant in the course again in the future.
1. Details of implementation
The instructor we partnered with chose to implement
Oqtant in a second-semester quantum mechanics course for
upper-division physics students. The course was “one of
the terminal courses”in the physics major at a primarily
undergraduate institution and covered topics such as the
quantum harmonic oscillator; hydrogen atom; perturbation
theory; hyperfine, fine structure, and Zeeman effect; and
identical particles. There were a total of 12 students in the
class, consisting of mostly seniors in their last or second-to-
last semester of college. The class met once a week for
2 hours 50 minutes each Friday throughout the Spring 2024
semester. Most of the students had previously taken a
computational physics course in the department, although
that course did not use
PYTHON
.
The instructor did not have expertise in some areas
relevant to Oqtant, although they had taught this quantum
mechanics course multiple times before. The instructor’s
research area is experimental solid-state physics, and they
reported having very little knowledge about experimental
atomic physics or BECs when deciding to implement
Oqtant in their course. They had some experience coding
and described their level of knowledge of
PYTHON
as
“functional familiarity.”They had taught this quantum
mechanics course 2–3 times before, and each time they
had kept the course mostly the same, but varied the final
presentations or papers.
This instructor implemented the two activities we devel-
oped at various points throughout the semester and ended
the course with an open-ended project with Oqtant. The
instructor picked two locations in the course and inserted
these activities at a time when the topic changed (e.g., from
the hydrogen atom to perturbation theory), so the activities
with Oqtant did not break up the flow of the rest of the
class. The instructor assigned the preparation activities, had
students submit their responses before class, and treated
them the same as other prelecture questions where students
could discuss them briefly at the start of the class. Oqtant
was never online during the class sessions, so the students
worked on Oqtant activities together in class, but the jobs
they submitted were only run outside of class time. The
details of how each activity was included in the course are
depicted in Table IV. The instructor asked us or Infleqtion
employees working with Oqtant questions a few times
throughout the semester when the online documentation
was not sufficient.
The students worked through the majority of the first
activity in a single class session. The first 20 minutes of that
class session were spent discussing the preparation activity,
and then the students worked through the main activity for
the rest of the class while the instructor circled around,
helping students as needed. That activity began with the
students analyzing already-taken data, so it was not a
problem for most of the activity that Oqtant was not online
at the time. However, the end of the activity required
students to submit their own jobs to Oqtant, so students
submitted jobs to the job queue by the end of the class
session, even though their jobs did not run on the hardware
until the following week. The instructor then spent a little
time discussing this activity the following class session
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after the students were able to collect the data from their
jobs. The instructor intended to have the students work in
small groups for this activity, but, as was typical in the
course, the students ended up discussing the activity as an
entire class.
The second activity was incorporated into the class over
two sessions, surrounding a week when Oqtant was online.
In total, the instructor dedicated around 4–4.5 hours of class
time to this activity. During the first week, the students
performed some new analyses of the data they had collected
in Activity 1, planned what new jobs they were going to
request, and submitted them. They then retrieved the
completed jobs and finished the activity the second week.
The students worked in their final projects groups for this
activity so they could begin generating ideas for their final
projects, and there was additional communication between
groups.
The final project was a way for students to explore topics
they were interested in with Oqtant in small groups at the
end of the semester. The instructor encouraged the students
to choose a topic that the class had “swept under the rug or
something that piqued [their] interest.”All four of the three-
student groups ended up starting with one of the demon-
stration notebooks Oqtant hosts online [84] focusing on
optical barriers and tunneling, quantum interference, and
the speed of sound in quantum matter. No in-class time was
dedicated to working on the final project, but the students
had 2–3 weeks to complete it, with Oqtant being online one
of those weeks.
To grade the activities with Oqtant, the instructor
developed rubrics. For the preparation activities, the
instructor tried to check whether the students’answers
lined up with their own understanding and if the students’
reasoning “show[ed] some deep thought.”For the activities
that the students submitted as Jupyter notebooks, the
instructor applied their rubric to the notebooks without
running any of the cells and gave a set number of points for
certain analyses. The activities and final project with
Oqtant combined to be worth up to a total of 15% of
students’grades.
2. Perceived outcomes
The instructor thought that the students in their class had
accomplished the learning goals of thinking critically about
experimental data and learning how to work with it. When
asked if their learning goals were met, the instructor said they
were “happy with how it went”although they acknowledged
that some students “did it better than others.”When discus-
sing skills the students had gained, the instructor further
explained that “the major thing [the students] got out of”
working with Oqtant was “critical thinking about experi-
ments and data analysis,”whichincludeda“better under-
standing of…fitting data to functions to extract physical
parameters.”However, these skills may not have come just
from working with Oqtant as many students in the course
were concurrently enrolled in an Advanced Lab course where
those data analysis skills were also practiced.
The instructor also emphasized how engaging with
Oqtant allowed their students to work on problems that
were not clearly defined and experience the messiness of
science. When asked about other benefits working with
Oqtant provided to their students, they said,
It provided a good opportunity for them to…get
comfortable with true science experiences…
They saw me, as someone who hopefully they
perceive as a scientist or a physicist, go through
probably similar struggles they had where it’s
like, ‘I really don’t know the answer here, but I’m
comfortable with that, and we can figure it out’…
I think that adds value for students to feel more
comfortable…
TABLE IV. How Oqtant was used in an upper-division quantum mechanics course by week. Oqtant online means the experimental
apparatus was running the three days prior to the class sessions (which occurred on Fridays). Although Oqtant was online approximately
every other week, there were some schedule irregularities. During the course, students completed two Activities (A), each preceded by a
Preparation Activities (PA), as well as an open-ended final project that culminated in a presentation (pres.) to the entire class. For the main
activities, the students wrote code to submit jobs and analyzed data from Oqtant in class, and their jobs were run outside of class time.
Week of semester
12345 6 7 8 9 1011 12 13 14 15 16
Oqtant
online
✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Out of
class
PA1 Jobs for
A1 run
PA2 Jobs for
A2 run
Plan
project
Submit
jobs for
project
Prepare
pres.
In class A1 data
analysis
and job
submission
A1 debrief (Spring
break)
A2 data
analysis
and job
submission
A2 data
analysis
Project
pres.
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It can be valuable for students to see examples of their
instructor not knowing all of the answers, as this is how
students engage with experts in research. The instructor
also wanted students to see how experiments do not always
follow a linear trajectory:
One of the things that I think is really hard to get at
in the curriculum is the messiness of actual
science…And just that realistic approach to
experiment, I think, is a valuable thing that it
was nice to be able to have a nice sort of experience
that sort of walked students through that.
They saw working with Oqtant as a way to guide students
through an authentic type of science experience.
The instructor thought the iterative approach required by
Oqtant also provided students an opportunity to learn about
some aspects of research projects. When discussing the
skills their students had gained, the instructor brought up
the idea of course-based undergraduate research experi-
ences (CUREs) [18–20]. The instructor discussed how this
experience with Oqtant may have given students a similar
view of what science is like to what they might learn in a
CURE. They said,
I think that they got a similar type experience, or
what I expect [CUREs] would be like…because
a lot of those final projects…were like, ‘yeah, so
this clearly was not what we expected sort of
thing.’
They continued to explain how seeing unexpected results
prompted the students to consider various reasons for the
discrepancy, a skill the instructor values in students in their
research group. Incorporating Oqtant into the course
provided the students an opportunity to see how experi-
ments rarely work the first time, helping them engage in the
authentic practice of iteration [85].
Although the open-ended nature of the final projects
helped provide students the opportunity to engage in some
authentic scientific practices, the students may not have
been fully comfortable with the ambiguity that came with it.
The instructor explained,
Quite a few groups were concerned…that it was
kind of an open-ended project. So they wanted
some more concrete like is ‘this a good question
to answer,’and–They didn’t really appreciate the
‘I want you to have learned something and then
teach it to me and convince me you’ve learned it
and whatever interests you like, there’s no bad
question here.’… I don’t think they were com-
fortable with that open-ended…type question.
This lack of comfort with open-ended assignments is not
unique to Oqtant; the uncertainty and the lack of structure
and guidance have been shown to make some students feel
uncomfortable [86,87], while others appreciate the freedom
associated with the open-ended projects [86,88].
Some of the students seemed to really enjoy working
with Oqtant and got a lot out of it, whereas others may have
thought it was not worth the time and effort they needed to
dedicate to it. When asked how students perceived working
with Oqtant, the instructor said,
I have some sampling bias, because I’ve only heard
back…from the ones who really enjoyed it…So
I’ve had a couple students mention how much they
enjoyed it and really liked it. One student…said ‘if
[my summer research plan] all falls through and
Idon’t have anything going on in the summer,
I would love to keep working with Oqtant and
maybe try to…see if [I] can put together notebooks
for the Infleqtion site or something’… so two or
three I think really liked it…I expect there were the
other tail as well where two or threewere probably
like this was a lot of work and not worth my time.
This perceived mixed response from the students carried
over to conceptual understanding of Oqtant as well. When
asked if the activities were at the appropriate level for their
students, the instructor said,
I think so. I think some of the students who did
better with it in my class really understood a lot of
it. Some of the students who succeeded, but
I wouldn’t say excelled…had discussions with
me a bit like, ‘alright, I got it to work and we did
it, but I’m having a hard time thinking about the
physics because it took all my effort to do that.’
There were a lot of concepts (both physics and
PYTHON
coding) that all needed to connect together for students to
understand what was happening in the experiment, so it is
unsurprising this may have been a challenge for some
students.
The instructor also enjoyed implementing Oqtant and
learned from it. When asked if they had enjoyed incorpo-
rating Oqtant into their course, they said,
I did. I like to learn things. And that’s kind of one
of the motivations for doing it was I wanted to
actually learn more than ‘oh yeah, BECs and
things are cool.’And so I got to play with it. And
even though I just finished saying I didn’t take as
deep a dive [into the underlying theory] as I would
have liked, I did learn a lot. And it was fun. I had a
lot of fun working with the students and watching
them learn.
Overall, the instructor thought the implementation of
Oqtant was a success. Although some students enjoyed
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working with Oqtant more than others, the students
engaged in a scientific experience that was more authentic
than the activities in many of their other courses. In
particular, the way the instructor did not have all the
answers and the iterative data collection and analysis
process helped the students think critically about exper-
imental data and learn about the scientific process. Because
of this success, the instructor is planning to incorporate the
activities and final project with Oqtant into their course
again with only minor changes, such as spending slightly
more time discussing the preparation activities.
C. Student perceptions of using Oqtant
In the previous section, we saw that the instructor of the
course thought some of their students enjoyed working
with Oqtant and gained skills from doing so, but it is
important to investigate the students’perceptions of their
experiences too. By looking at students’written reflections
after the two structured activities with Oqtant, as well as the
think-aloud interviews, we find that students do perceive
Oqtant to be a real experiment even though they never
interact with the apparatus in person. Additionally, they
think that it can provide opportunities for them to expe-
rience a type of quantum experiment that may not be
available at their home institution, although the remote
nature of the experiment comes with some drawbacks as
well. Some of the students enjoyed being able to connect to
an experiment in a different location, although they did not
like some of the necessary infrastructure that came with it.
1. “Realness”of experiment
One question that naturally arises when students do not
have physical access to an experiment, is whether or not
students perceive themselves to be working with a real
experiment. When we directly asked the students, most of
them agreed that working with Oqtant did feel like working
with a real experiment even though they could only access
it remotely. They cited a variety of reasons for this, which
are listed in Table V.
Oqtant seemed like a real experiment to some students
because they worked with real data that they had requested.
One student said “Even though I could only access it
remotely, I felt that when I submitted jobs I was actively
requesting data from a lab I know exists but physically
can’t visit myself.”Other students emphasized the choice
they had in the experimental parameters they requested.
One student explained, “If I can change certain parameters
to see how a system is affected, that is a ‘real’experiment. I
believe that this would be essentially the same if the
technology was at our university campus or at home.”
Another student agreed with this idea by stating “it feels
like there is a lot of depth here in terms of what parameters
you have control over…that helps it feel more like an
experiment rather than some cloud-based thing that I’m just
running code on.”
Even when students chose the same parameters, the
returned data were not always the same, and it had noise
and variation, also contributed to Oqtant seeming like it
was a real experiment. One student said, “the labs seem like
we are working with a real experiment because we have the
choice of what parameters we want, and even if we choose
the same ones, the data isn’t the same.”Another student
explained, “it made me feel like I was actually getting data
because I was inputting a job, and then there was actual
noise and variation at the output of it.”
Some students noticed other experimental imperfections
that would not have occurred if it were not a real experi-
ment. One student who had noted a speck of dust on a
returned image said “I guess the speck of dust was cool. It
made me realize that it’s an actual experiment too.”Another
commented not on the imperfections of the returned data,
but on the way the experiment schedule was not ideal,
saying “This activity did make me feel like I was working
on a real experiment, especially considering the downtimes
the lab had for updates and other processes.”
Connected with several of these ideas is the way that
students needed to interpret the data they obtained from
Oqtant. One student said,
I actually had to interpret it…When it comes to
like determining where the BEC was created,
there’s some variability of where I can choose,
and the temperature and the ranges…That
actually felt like I had to do some thinking about
it, and analyze the data itself and actually work
from it.
Another student compared their analysis of data from
Oqtant with a simulation, explaining, “we get to analyze
much more realistic data that has flaws, forcing us to more
deeply analyze and interpret the raw data to reach con-
clusions instead of being spoon fed the answers like we are
with idealistic data.”Other ways of needing to think about
the experiment also contributed to students feeling like it
was a real experiment including the ability to troubleshoot
when issues arose and the way the students understood how
the apparatus functions.
TABLE V. Reasons why students felt like they were working
with a real experiment as they were working with Oqtant, as
identified in the thematic analysis of the student data.
Students felt like Oqtant was a real experiment because…
…they worked with real data they had requested.
…they chose the experimental parameters.
…there was variation and noise in the data.
…there were experimental imperfections.
…they needed to interpret the data.
…they were able to troubleshoot the experiment.
…they had learned how the apparatus functions.
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On the other hand, there were reasons why Oqtant may
not have felt like a real experiment to students. One student
said, “The only thing that kind of felt like it could be
something like a simulation was the fact that it was
completely remote and the idea that someone could
potentially create a simulation with imperfections.”They
followed up on this idea, asking
But, how would I know [if it was a simulation]?
Like, if I’m just some person, just kind of messing
around with this? I’m just curious. I mean,
because it’s all through a [Jupyter] notebook.
And it’s all remote. You could just make a
simulation that models BECs and people will
have no idea. You know?
Overall, most students perceived Oqtant to be a real
experiment for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons
are inherent to experimental physics (e.g., noise in images
returned by the experiment), whereas others are based on
actions the students took (e.g., choosing the parameters,
requesting data, and interpreting it). Instructors could
consider discussing these different elements with their
students, emphasizing the capabilities and limitations of
real experiments.
2. Comparison with other experiments
Although Oqtant is a new type of publicly available
experimental platform, there are many ways it is both
similar to and different from other physics experiments. We
asked students to compare Oqtant with other experiments
they know about in both instructional and research labs,
noting that they came into this study with varied prior
experiences. Students pointed out various similarities and
differences, focusing both on the experiment itself (e.g., the
system it studies, type of data, and data analysis needed)
and some aspects of being remote (e.g., easy access and
controlling the experiment only from a computer). Students
additionally discussed how the remote nature of Oqtant
allows for potential benefits over nonremote experiments,
while also coming with some drawbacks. The character-
istics of Oqtant students discussed, along with ways
different students associated them, are listed in Table VI.
The students found the general experimental process
with Oqtant of taking and analyzing data to be similar to
their other experimental experiences. When asked how the
data analysis they performed in the first activity compared
with their prior labs, one student said, “This lab shares
many similarities to previous labs [in courses] in the sense
that there was data to be obtained through a streamlined
process.”Another student compared Oqtant with other
apparatus in research labs, saying, “I would say it’s similar:
you take data and analyze the data to fit different models,
similar to other research labs.”
However, the specific type of data analysis students
performed with Oqtant was similar to some students’prior
experiences yet different from others. When comparing the
data analysis from the first activity with their prior lab
courses and research experiences, one student said, “The
data analysis here was pretty similar to what I’ve done in
the past…In many of my plots, I have to fit data points with
a nonlinear equation, and compare results between two or
more plots, just like in this lab.”Other students pointed out
some differences including the specific fit functions (e.g., a
2D Gaussian) and the quantitative nature of the analysis.
One student appreciated the opportunity to use a Gaussian
fit since they had heard a lot about that fit function without
having an opportunity to apply it.
Not only the type of data analysis but also the physical
system under study was familiar for some students, but not
others. When comparing Oqtant with other apparatus in
research labs, one student explained the similarities: “This
Oqtant apparatus is definitely a specialized piece of equip-
ment; however, it is not vastly different from many optical
labs as it uses systems that can be used in other fields of
physics.”Another student pointed out that other research
labs also “play with BECs.”Some students found Oqtant
different from their prior experiences. One student, who
TABLE VI. Comparison between Oqtant and other experiments students had worked with (or knew about) in instructional or research
labs. The check marks indicate whether these emergent characteristics were discussed as being similar to or different from students’
experiences, as well as whether they were related to noted benefits or drawbacks of remote experiments. Multiple check marks for
seemingly contradictory classifications indicate that different students talked about the characteristics in different ways, and the lack of a
check mark indicates that the connection was not discussed unprompted by any of the students.
Characteristics of Oqtant Similar Different Benefit Drawback
Ability to take and analyze data ✓
Data analysis involves plotting and fitting data ✓✓
New type of physical system (atoms and optics) ✓✓✓ ✓
Anyone can access experiment from anywhere ✓✓
Quick and easy way to obtain a lot of real experimental data ✓✓
Cannot physically see or interact with setup ✓✓
Control experiment from computer interface ✓✓✓
Remotely connecting to experiment operated by someone else ✓✓✓ ✓
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worked on “more of the computing part and the theory part”
explained how working with atoms was new for them: “So I
guess it’s just a more physics-y part of quantum that I haven’t
really explored, that isn’t really taught here at [my institu-
tion].”They explained how Oqtant’s emphasis on the
experimental hardware and “actual measurements”(as
opposed to creating algorithms) was a new opportunity for
them. However, not all students appreciated working with a
new type of system. One student brought up their lack of
experiencewith the system as a drawback, although the same
would also be true for any other new type of experiment.
The way this type of system is made publicly available
and can be accessed from anywhere is something students
noted as being both unique and a large benefit. One student
explained, “working on a remote experiment is great
because I don’t need to travel to a different state in order
to do experiments, and others can run the same experiment
with just an internet connection.”For some students, this
was a way to bring a cold atoms experiment to their
institution, since they did not have access to such an
experiment previously. One student said,
It…reduces the lack of professional information
I have access to. Because that’s one of the big
issues at [my institution]. We don’t have a lot
of quantum teachers yet…So I think remote
experiments gives me access to those different
informations.
This student saw the benefit for themselves that educators
are hoping Oqtant could broadly provide: access to
quantum hardware for students who would not otherwise
have the opportunity [29].
Because of the easy access, Oqtant provides students a
simple and quick way to obtain a lot of real experimental
data. This allows them to work with data from a complex
experiment without needing the time, equipment, and
technical knowledge to build it themselves. The ease of
obtaining data allows students to collect a lot more data
from Oqtant than they do from other experiments, and the
data contains real experimental noise and variation com-
pared with what they could obtain in a similarly easy
manner from a simulation. One student explained how
Oqtant also works better than other apparatus in research
labs, saying “it seems to always work as intended, which
I think is super cool.”Students are therefore able to focus
on the data collection and analysis aspects of experimen-
tation as opposed to building and maintaining the appara-
tus. One student explained,
I find that Oqtant is a hands-off type of exper-
imentation that allows for researchers to make use
of the equipment and operate it, without having
the hassle of operating and maintaining it. This is
very convenient, because it allows researchers to
focus more on conceptual ideas, as opposed to
experimental setup.
Oqtant may make it easier for students to engage with
certain aspects of experimental physics, even though it does
not allow for others.
Although the students noted important benefits to work-
ing with an experiment like Oqtant, one of the drawbacks to
being remote, and also a difference from most students’
prior experiences, is that they could not physically see or
interact with the experimental setup. One student explained
how different this was for them: “This definitely feels a lot
different from a traditional lab course where it would be a
lot more hands-on with…setting up the optics and doing
the alignment.”Some students thought the inability to see
the apparatus detracted slightly from their experience,
saying that there is “a little bit less intuition behind what
your goal is”and that it makes it less “tangible.”
Nonetheless, students can quickly become used to not
seeing the physical apparatus. One student said,
At first, it’s hard to get used to, but when you’re
used to it…it still gives you everything you need.
So, I think since this is the second time I’ve done
this, a lot more used to it. And so I don’t think it
really affected my experience that much.
Students have talked about the importance of “seeing”the
experiment themselves in other contexts too, such as with
in-person quantum optics experiments [35].
Instead of interacting with the experiment physically,
students controlled the experiment via a computer interface,
something that was similar for some, but not all, students
and that led to both benefits and drawbacks. Some students
had prior experience with or knowledge about IBM’s
quantum computer [32] and discussed similarities of
Oqtant with that, especially how both experiments involve
users writing code that they run by submitting a limited
number of jobs per day. Whencomparing Oqtant with other
research labs, one student said, “the majority of my
experiences when working with quantum devices is usually
interfaced similarly with jobs / only accessing some
terminal or GUI of the actual device.”It was not clear if
this student was talking about working with IBM’s quan-
tum computer or experiments in research labs they had
worked in, since many experiments in nonremote labs are
run from a computer. They further explained,
Me having experience in the lab, a lot of the time
it is just, ‘oh, this is what it is, and now we control
it from the computer.’So it feels the same, at least
to me. Like once you set it up, you’re just using it
based off queueing commands on the computer.
The fact that students could interact with Oqtant only via
a computer led to opportunities for skill development as
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well as challenges. One student said that this experience
helped them “practice syntax and working with
PYTHON
coding in a designated environment.”Although that is
something students can do with in-person experiments as
well, it is not possible to operate a remote experiment
without interacting with some type of computer interface.
However, students also noted various issues that arose
when connecting to Oqtant, including bad Internet con-
nections, lack of knowledge about APIs, and trouble
ensuring they had the correct version of
PYTHON
.
Getting Oqtant’s Python package downloaded on all
students’computers was a challenge also identified by
the instructor of the course and us during the think-aloud
interviews.
The last aspect of remote experiments students discussed
is how they worked with an experiment that was operated
by other people. This was a familiar experience for students
who had used IBM’s quantum computer, but very different
for others, and it also led to both benefits and drawbacks.
Although the students themselves were not directly inter-
acting with the staff at Infleqtion, one student mentioned
that collaboration is a benefit of remote experiments. They
said, “I got to…submit work requests to remote research-
ers, therefore practicing collaboration.”This type of col-
laboration is not common in most lab courses but is typical
in some research fields (e.g., astronomy or high-energy
physics). Obtaining data from an apparatus that others set
up and maintain requires placing trust in people the
students do not know, something one student noted as a
potential problem. They said, “I also have to place a certain
level of trust that the results I get back are accurate without
any way to test that.”Although the students saw this as a
drawback, it is similar to many research settings, so
instructors could emphasize steps students can take to
ensure they trust their data as a way to build this authentic
scientific skill.
The fact that they were taking data on someone else’s
experiment also made it harder for students to work on their
own schedule, troubleshoot the experiment, and obtain the
needed support. This may be the first time some students
were not able to take experimental data whenever they
wanted, as they could only obtain data when Oqtant was
online, and even then they did not receive the data
instantaneously because of the queue. It was also hard
for students to troubleshoot an apparatus that they were not
familiar with. One student pointed out that even if they
were around it in person, they might not be able to help
troubleshoot it: “I wouldn’t say I couldn’t troubleshoot the
machine, but I don’t think I would have been able to do
anything if I had access to it. I’d just kind of watch them fix
it or turn it on.”Troubleshooting is an important lab skill for
students to learn [16,89], but troubleshooting experimental
apparatus may be difficult to practice with a remote
experiment, although there are other types of trouble-
shooting students could still engage with. Students also
discussed how it can be hard to ask questions and get
support with a remote experiment.
Students identified many similarities and differences
between Oqtant and other experiments, which they saw
in both positive and negative ways. These comparisons
centered on the type of experiment Oqtant is, as well as its
remote nature. Some students benefited from access to a
modern quantum experiment not available at their institu-
tion, one of the primary goals of using Oqtant for
education. The students also noted other benefits including
the ability to easily access a lot of experimental data and the
opportunity to practice different skills. The drawbacks of
remote experiments students mentioned include ones that
are inherent to experiments like Oqtant, such as the way
students cannot physically see the apparatus or they may
run into issues connecting to it from a computer. However,
other drawbacks noted by students (e.g., the fact that they
need to rely on others to get data) could be reframed in
terms of opportunities to teach authentic scientific skills.
When teaching with this new experimental platform,
instructors can decide to emphasize points of common
similarity to students’past experiences to increase student
comfort or instead emphasize the similarity to some
research experiments as a way to teach scientific skills
and practices that are often not focused on in hands-on lab
courses.
3. Parts enjoyed
Generating student enjoyment and motivation is a
common goal for instructors when incorporating quantum
experiments into their courses (e.g., see Sec. IVA 1 and
Ref. [42]), so we investigated what parts of working with
Oqtant the students particularly enjoyed or did not enjoy.
Table VII shows the identified themes related to student
enjoyment. We focus on the aspects that are not specific to
TABLE VII. The parts of working with Oqtant students enjoyed and did not enjoy.
What students enjoyed What they did not enjoy
Working with ultracold atoms Job queues
Having visual data
PYTHON
package installation issues
Taking real experimental data Not enough background information
Connecting to a far-away experiment Things not working
Possibilities to explore on own
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the individual activities the students completed but could
also relate to other remote experiments.
Students enjoyed working with and detecting ultracold
atoms, an experimental platform that was distinct from
what some students had previous experience with (see
Sec. IV C 2). When asked what parts (if any) of the second
activity they had enjoyed, one student said,
Being able to measure the nano-Kelvin regime is
really cool…And then being able to basically
turn atoms into a different state and find out if that
actually happened. Of course, like the process of
cooling the atoms to this temperature is really
interesting. Lots of really interesting physics
there.
This student appreciated the physics happening in a regime
they are not often able to interact with. Another student
enjoyed the way the raw data came in the form of images of
the atoms, saying,
I liked…being able to see the condensate…And
I liked having the data as images as well…I’m
such a visual person, I have to be able to see
things. And so that was really helpful. Because…
when I was loading in…this data array, I was
like, I actually have no idea what I’m going to be
looking at, because these are just numbers…the
visualization was really good for something that’s
hard to visualize. So I appreciated that.
Students also enjoyed being able to take the data
themselves. When discussing the final part of the second
activity, one student said, “even though we’re seeing it over
a computer screen, these runs still seem like ‘my’personal
runs which makes it that much more fun.”When discussing
what parts of the first activity they had enjoyed, another
student said,
It’s really cool…because I was actually doing
experiments with whatever machine you guys
have in the nano Kelvin regime. I think that’s just
really cool. Just by like just sending stuff…I feel
like I don’t deserve all the data that’s coming out
from that. Because I’ve just sent like a couple
commands over. I think that’s really cool.
Some students enjoyed the fact that they were able to
connect to an experiment in a different location.
For other students, it was not just the fact that they
collected data, but that they also had the ability to explore
the experiment on their own. When asked what parts of the
second activity they enjoyed, one student said,
I think it’s really cool how much control over
these parameters you have. And I think it could be
a lot of fun to just play around with…this more.
And like, in lab one, I remember…we were
making BECs and I was choosing the temper-
ature. And I was like, well, I want to see what
happens if I choose zero nanokelvins. And it was
cool that I could do that…There wasn’t anything
stopping me…It seems like there aren’t too many
experimental barriers here. Like the space in
which I can play around with this is pretty open.
So I enjoyed that aspect of it.
Although some students indicated there were no par-
ticular aspects of working with Oqtant they did not enjoy,
there were a few aspects other students disliked including
the job queues and issues with the
PYTHON
package
installation. Some of the students mentioned how working
with Oqtant would have been more challenging and
potentially frustrating for them if they were less proficient
in
PYTHON
. It is possible that student enjoyment, at least
when accessing Oqtant through the
PYTHON
API, may
depend somewhat on their
PYTHON
ability.
Some students did not enjoy the fact that they did not
have enough background information or context when
working with Oqtant. When asked about parts they did
not enjoy, one student said,
I guess the only thing is…if there were more
resources. Well, I guess…there were references
that I could read and stuff in the preliminary
stuff…if I had a little bit more context about why
we would want to measure the number of atoms
and the temperature.
Other students also mentioned how the background read-
ing was dense or they did not retain all of it. Providing
the appropriate amount of background information was
recognized as a challenge by the instructors too (see
Sec. IVA 2).
Students also discussed not liking when the experiment
did not work as expected and they were not able to figure
things out on their own. When asked what parts they did not
enjoy, one student said “every time it threw an error and
I had to figure out what was happening.”Another student
discussed not enjoying “whenever I got stuck,”also saying
“I guess…if something doesn’t work, that’s not great. But
it’s still cool to…just to try to troubleshoot it. I guess if
I was doing this a lot, then if Oqtant stopped working, that
would be kind of annoying.”The difficulty of trouble-
shooting was one of the drawbacks students noted about
remote experiments (see Sec. IV C 2), and that may be
linked with students’lack of enjoyment when parts of the
experiment or code did not work as expected.
Overall, students enjoyed many aspects of working with
Oqtant, but there were also some aspects they did not enjoy.
Instructors are not able to control some of these aspects,
such as the way Oqtant relies on job queues; however,
BORISH and LEWANDOWSKI PHYS. REV. PHYS. EDUC. RES. 21, 010133 (2025)
010133-20
instructors do have control over other aspects students
mentioned. Instructors could consider providing students
opportunities to explore the platform on their own, ensure
students are provided sufficient background materials, and
scaffold teaching how to troubleshoot issues the students
may encounter.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, we investigated instructor and student
views on a new publicly available remote BEC experiment,
as a way to begin studying possibilities to make quantum
experiments accessible to students at institutions with any
level of resources. Our primary goal was not evaluating
student learning, so we cannot speak definitively to the
efficacy of this approach; however, many instructors are
excited about the possibility of remote quantum experi-
ments, one instructor who incorporated Oqtant into their
course perceived positive benefits for their students, and
students’discussions of their experiences working with
Oqtant are promising. This indicates that Oqtant and other
similar types of remote experiments may have the potential
to benefit students, although they will not replace hands-on
experiences with apparatus.
Instructors foresee potential benefits to using Oqtant, but
they also have concerns about implementing it in their
courses. They are interested in incorporating Oqtant into
different types of courses and hope their students will use it
to accomplish a range of learning outcomes, including
conceptual learning about quantum topics, student affect,
and understanding how quantum theory manifests in
experiments. Learning how to teach with a new exper-
imental platform may also be a fun learning experience for
instructors. However, using Oqtant in the classroom comes
with challenges as well, including the need for reliable
access to the experiment, the way neither instructors nor
students are likely to be familiar with BECs, and the way it
could replace an opportunity for a hands-on experience.
While some of these challenges are inherent to any remote
system, others may be able to be mitigated by support from
various entities including outside educators, the company
Infleqtion, and the instructors’institutions.
To help instructors consider ways to overcome these
challenges, we presented a concrete example of one way
Oqtant has been successfully incorporated into an upper-
division quantum mechanics course and the benefits the
instructor perceived for their students. Over a couple of
class periods, the instructor helped their students work in
groups on the two activities we developed and then
assigned an open-ended project at the end of the semester.
The instructor enjoyed the experience and is planning to
implement it again when they next teach the same course if
Oqtant is available. The instructor perceived a mix of
responses from their students in terms of both enjoyment
and comprehension, yet overall thought their students met
their learning goals related to thinking critically about data
and realizing experiments are not ideal.
The students’experiences also indicated that Oqtant may
provide useful benefits. Although there was the possibility
that students would not recognize Oqtant was a real
experiment since they were only accessing it remotely,
the students predominantly felt like they were working with
a real experiment. This occurred both because they were
receiving real experimental data (as evidenced partly by its
variability) and because of the choices and actions the
students were able to make. When comparing Oqtant with
their prior experimental experiences, students noted both
similarities and differences. These led to some student-
perceived advantages, such as the way anyone could access
Oqtant or the ease with which students could obtain a lot of
real data. Students also noted drawbacks to remote experi-
ments, although some of those may provide opportunities
to teach students some skills that are authentic to physics
research. Additionally, students enjoyed many aspects of
working with Oqtant (e.g., exploring a platform with
ultracold atoms), although there were some aspects of
remote experiments (e.g., job queues and software instal-
lation) that they did not like.
Comparing student and instructor views about the value
they placed on Oqtant, we found both similarities and
differences. One similarity is that many instructors wanted
their students to have the opportunity to work with
research-level experiments, and students did notice many
ways that Oqtant is similar to apparatus in research labs.
Additionally, some students really enjoyed working with
Oqtant, which may contribute to the affective and motiva-
tional gains sought by instructors. On the other hand, the
instructor of the upper-division course wanted students to
experience the “messiness of actual science,”yet one of the
aspects of working with Oqtant some students did not like
was when things didnot work as they expected. There may be
a tension between some of the instructors’goals for the
students and students not necessarily recognizing the benefits
they obtain when faced with unexpected results, an oppor-
tunity that may naturally arise from some types of exper-
imental and computational activities [90,91]. Instructors
could focus on helping students clearly articulate the
problems they come across, as this is an important part of
authentic scientific discovery [92].
This study points out potential ways both instructors and
students think Oqtant could be useful in education and
some of the perceived benefits, but further work needs to be
done to rigorously evaluate if and how interacting with
Oqtant can lead to these possible learning outcomes. In
response to the many calls to train the upcoming quantum
workforce, especially emphasizing the cultivation of exper-
imental skills [10–12], experiments like Oqtant may have
the potential to teach some of these skills to a large number
of students. Instructors and students in this study pointed
out possible skills they could learn with Oqtant such as data
AFFORDANCES AND CHALLENGES OF …PHYS. REV. PHYS. EDUC. RES. 21, 010133 (2025)
010133-21
analysis, coding, collaboration, dealing with unexpected
results, and some types of troubleshooting. Some of these,
such as data analysis, could come about from all of the less
resource-intensive options discussed in Sec. II B; however,
Oqtant could provide students the opportunity to practice
their data collection skills and to analyze real experimental
data they took themselves, which simulations and virtual
screen experiments do not offer. Just like other remote
quantum experiments, Oqtant may also provide students
opportunities to learn how to design experimental proce-
dures and troubleshoot experiments remotely, while ensur-
ing that these opportunities are available for students at any
institution. There is a dearth of studies demonstrating
student development of experimental skills, so future work
should investigate the efficacy of different proposed
approaches, such as the use of remote cloud-accessible
experiments, to supplement hands-on experiences and
bring experimental experiences to students at a wider range
of institutions.
If Oqtant or other similar remote experiments can
provide a benefit to a wide range of students, the question
then becomes: How do we ensure such an experiment
remains free and publicly available? Even with the growing
excitement in the educational community, Infleqtion
recently announced an “indefinite pause”for Oqtant, and
the future of the experiment is uncertain. What type of
models of collaboration between academia and industry
partners would allow for the long-term sustainability of
remote experiments while meeting the needs of students?
Should educators continue to rely on industry to provide
these remote experiments or are there resources available to
ensure both the creation and sustainability of such
experiments within the academic community [83]? What
other opportunities could exist for the establishment of free
and publicly accessible quantum experiments that are
tailored toward student learning?
This work is only the starting point of investigating new
methods of providing access to quantum experiments to
students everywhere. We hope both the educational mate-
rials we developed as well as this initial study of student
and instructor experiences with Oqtant will serve as a
model and help inform conversations about if such remote
experiments would be beneficial to the educational com-
munity and how we can ensure their future existence. This
would be just one step towards creating equitable learning
opportunities to teach and inspire the next generation of
quantum physicists.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the student and instructor
participants in our study, especially the instructor who
partnered with us to implement our activities in their
course. We would also like to thank Alex Tingle, Noah
Fitch, Anjul Loiacono, and the rest of the Oqtant team for
partnering with us on this project. Finally, we would like to
thank the CU PER group for feedback and suggestions
throughout this study. This work was supported by
Infleqtion as well as NSF Grant No. PHY 2317149 and
NSF QLCI Award No. OMA 2016244.
The content of this work is solely the responsibility of
the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of
any of the funding sources.
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