NSF Award
1821960
Cybersecurity education is increasingly critical to national and personal security. College and universities need to prepare students for the computer and network security challenges they will encounter, and the workforce of the future needs to have additional cybersecurity skills to best protect the interests of the nation. Computer simulations have been successfully used in many areas of education to engage students and measure their learning. Although many simulations are available to increase cybersecurity awareness, most either target high school students or require high levels of knowledge to use. As a result, it is hard to find serious simulations for college students that focus on advanced security topics. However, the education community needs this type of tool to help motivate and engage students in learning difficult security concepts. This engagement is especially important for attracting and retaining students to the field of cybersecurity. This collaborative project of Winston-Salem State University and North Carolina A&T State University, both historically black universities, aims to develop three educational computer simulations with built-in assessments that effectively teach key cybersecurity concepts. The project will directly benefit students at the two participating universities, by enabling the students to be both developers and users of the simulations. This project will contribute to the knowledge base of effective teaching in cybersecurity and better prepare graduates for the future workforce.<br/><br/>The objectives of the project are to: 1) Develop three educational simulations with built-in assessments to effectively teach cybersecurity concepts involving access control, network vulnerabilities, and buffer overflow. 2) Integrate the simulations into the existing computer science curriculum at both universities. 3) Develop and implement assessment methods to measure the effectiveness of the simulations. The simulations will be designed with different levels of difficulty to target undergraduate students at all levels, from first-year students to seniors. Assessment of the simulations' effectiveness will use a quasi-experimental design together with both quantitative and qualitative data to answer two research questions: 1) Is the simulation more effective than a lecture for achieving learning outcomes, a quality learner experience, and influencing student attitudes and motivation? and 2) Is the simulation more effective than other experiential learning approaches (e.g., case study; lab) for achieving learning outcomes, a quality learner experience, and influencing student attitudes and motivation? The simulations and research findings will be publically available through the project website and other on-line venues, and will be disseminated to faculty via conference presentations, journal publications, and a summer faculty workshop. This project will strengthen the North Carolina A&T State University's Center for Cyber Defense, a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education designated by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
