Cyber securing the future

Abstract

Many high school computer science programs do not touch on the field of cybersecurity, meaning a large number of students is not exposed to such important knowledge and career opportunities until at least college. In this project, we aimed at increasing awareness and knowledge of the cybersecurity field in a pre-college environment. We developed multiple lessons using various teaching strategies with the main purpose being to increase knowledge and secondary purpose of determining if students retain knowledge better through a hands-on learning experience or through lectures. In our results, many students expressed that their knowledge in the field of cybersecurity has increased, as well as their interest in it. The pre-lecture survey also stated that many students were not overly familiar with anything besides basic password security before our lessons. While both classes rated their understanding of the field at around the same level, the class that we did the more hands-on experience with rated that the lesson was more interesting and worth the time. These responses, combined with the ever-growing importance of cybersecurity in the modern world, suggests that introducing cybersecurity to general high school level computer science curriculum would be of great benefit to the students.