Built for Professionals, Grounded in Evidence
Quantum Academy courses are built around how professionals study, understand and apply demanding technical material. Our teaching combines full written content, purposeful diagrams and information graphics, active exercises, realistic scenarios and short, focused videos. We draw on research in learning and instructional design, and choose each element for what it helps you understand or do.
We launched with live courses, online and in person, because we place particular value on direct interaction with experienced instructors. The opportunity to ask questions, compare perspectives and work through a difficult problem together is central to how we want to teach. Live courses will always be our priority.
We will also offer on-demand courses, bringing the same subject expertise and educational principles to a complete learning experience you can work through at your own pace. Their design combines structured written lessons, visual explanations, exercises, short explanatory videos and focused contributions from our instructors and other senior industry practitioners.
Why We Started with Live Training
Live online and in-person courses give you direct access to the practitioners who teach our courses. You can ask how a concept applies to your environment, explore a difficult tradeoff and challenge an assumption. Instructors can follow the discussion, clarify misunderstandings and work through the questions that emerge.
Live sessions are hands-on. Instructors work through exercises with you and run group problem-solving. You explore realistic scenarios as a cohort, learn from peers facing similar challenges and hear the questions that surface when professionals compare notes on their own environments.
The written materials, diagrams and exercises described below also support our live teaching. Live time is spent on the work that benefits from people thinking together, in a room or online. The materials remain yours to keep and reference afterward.
For private team training, we adapt the content and exercises to your environment, technology stack and objectives. See How We Deliver Training for delivery options.
How Our On-Demand Courses Are Designed
Our on-demand courses are designed as a complete course of study. Written lessons provide the structure, diagrams clarify relationships, exercises ask you to apply what you have learned, and short videos add explanation, demonstration and professional experience. Each element connects to the others and to a clear learning objective.
We put the emphasis on what you can understand, practice and use afterward. A total number of video hours tells you little about those things. Our on-demand approach brings together five complementary elements.
Structured written content you can actually use
The core of every on-demand course is full, structured written content, organized by what you will be able to do. These are complete lessons, with explanations, worked examples and references. They are written for professionals, so you can move quickly through familiar material and spend more time on what is new.
We put text first for a practical reason. Technical professionals scan, search and reference. You can find the paragraph on hybrid key establishment, reread the exact parameters of an algorithm and return to a specific section months later. You can keep a detailed explanation in view while working through a problem, compare sections and revisit a difficult passage at your own pace.
Diagrams and visual explanations
Architecture diagrams, process flows, decision trees, comparison matrices and conceptual illustrations are core course content. When a concept involves relationships, a sequence or a spatial arrangement, we show it in a diagram next to the text that explains it. Examples include how a TLS handshake negotiates a hybrid key, where QKD nodes are placed in a network and the order of migration phases.
Every visual has a teaching purpose. It should help you follow a process, compare options or understand how the parts fit together. We include an image when it contributes to the explanation.
Active exercises and explanatory feedback
Throughout an on-demand course, you work through knowledge checks, scenario-based exercises, sequencing activities and practice questions. Each includes immediate feedback. If you get something wrong, the feedback explains why, so you can revisit the reasoning and try again.
The scenarios include real professional complexity: budget constraints, legacy dependencies, vendor limitations and competing priorities. You might identify a missing dependency, put migration activities in a sensible order or assess the tradeoffs in a proposed design. The aim is to build your ability to use the material in a decision.
Short, focused explanations and demonstrations
Video has an important role in our on-demand courses. We use it to explain a difficult concept, show a protocol in motion, demonstrate a tool or work through a problem step by step. An instructor might build up a diagram while explaining the reasoning, or show what happens as a parameter changes.
These videos are short and focused, typically three to seven minutes, with each one built around a specific concept, question or task. The length follows the purpose of the explanation. The written lesson provides the surrounding detail and references, while the video helps you see or follow something more clearly.
Experience and perspective from senior practitioners
Our on-demand design also includes short videos from our instructors and other senior industry practitioners, sharing their thoughts, experience and professional judgment. A contribution might explore a difficult decision, explain a lesson from a project, discuss a common misconception or offer a perspective on how the field is developing.
These contributions are brief and tied to the subject you are studying. Hearing someone explain what they considered, what surprised them and what they would do differently brings another dimension to the written material. It gives you a chance to examine how experienced people think through the issues you are learning about.
The elements work together throughout the course. You might read an explanation of a migration dependency, examine a diagram, watch a short practitioner contribution about a related challenge and then work through a scenario with feedback. That connection between explanation, experience and application is central to our on-demand design.
You Keep the Materials
Whatever format you choose, the written course materials and exercises are yours to keep and use in your work. We build resources designed to be useful long after the course ends:
- Reference templates you can adapt – inventory worksheets, assessment frameworks, planning templates and evaluation checklists
- Quick-reference charts and comparison tables – algorithm characteristics, decision matrices and standards crosswalks
- Handouts and job aids you will use in your day-to-day work
Every Course Includes a PDF Companion
After completing a course, you receive a PDF companion booklet covering the course material. It brings the structured written content, diagrams and key references together in a single document you can keep. It is a more compact reference than the full course, which also includes interactive exercises, video, animations or live discussion that a PDF cannot reproduce.
The companion helps you refresh your memory when you need it. Months after a course, when you have a question at work, you can open the PDF, search for the relevant section and revisit the explanation without scrubbing through video or logging back into a platform.
The PDF companion is included with every course, in every format, at no extra cost.
The Evidence Behind Our Approach
Our approach draws on research in learning and instructional design, alongside practical choices about how professionals study and use technical material. Five principles shape our on-demand courses and also inform our live teaching:
- Written explanations and visuals should work together. Research on illustrated scientific explanations shows that carefully designed diagrams can support conceptual understanding and problem-solving, particularly when learners are new to a subject. We pair explanatory visuals with the relevant text.
- Active recall and feedback are part of learning. Research on retrieval practice supports actively recalling material to strengthen later retention. Research on explanatory feedback also supports explaining the reasoning behind an answer to help learners apply concepts to new questions. Our courses build both into the learning process.
- Short videos need a clear purpose. Research on online course videos has found greater engagement with shorter segments. We use that finding to inform our production choices, designing each video around a focused explanation, demonstration or practitioner contribution.
- Structured text supports precise study and later reference. Searchable written lessons let you control your pace, compare details and return to the exact explanation you need. That practical value is why written content forms the core of our on-demand courses.
- Professional relevance shapes the experience. Learners bring knowledge, experience and responsibilities of their own. Our examples and exercises connect the subject to the decisions, constraints and objectives they encounter at work.
When you finish a Quantum Academy course, you should be able to do something you could not do before, and have the materials to keep doing it.
How We Use AI
We use AI to support research, drafting and editing, including first drafts of course material. Subject-matter experts decide what we teach, set the scope and substance, review the sources and technical claims, and approve the final material. People have the first and final say.
That responsibility applies equally to live and on-demand courses. We treat AI output as draft material, and Quantum Academy takes responsibility for what we publish and teach. Our instructors teach every live session themselves. Our AI Editorial Policy explains how we use these tools and how people review the work.
See for Yourself
We offer two free, one-hour introductory courses that introduce the subject and our approach to teaching:
Explore a free introduction before choosing a full program. For instructor-led sessions, see our live training schedule.