Reach to Teach: Preparing Cybersecurity Experts as Adjunct Community College Faculty

Abstract

While the nation should maintain and expand the educational capabilities in cybersecurity given the current high demand for this sector, currently there exists a capacity issue: students cannot readily be added to the education system, especially at the Community Colleges level, because trained faculty to accommodate expanded academic demand are scarce. Cybersecurity experts in the workforce have the potential to fill the need for part-time cybersecurity faculty at the Community College level. The challenge is to prepare these technology-savvy individuals with classroom pedagogical insights and skills which not usually part of a cybersecurity experts skillset. A research question for this development project is “Can we use an online environment to provide pedagogy training for potential adjunct community college faculty.” Currently, the Reach To Teach project is exploring this possibility through a research effort engaging current faculty, as well as education experts, and a pilot Reach To Teach online course that is being made available to these cybersecurity experts. The Reach to Teach pilot is a set of six sessions, each of which includes the following: introduction to Community Colleges, ethics, and ideas for classroom pedagogy (e.g. the general structure of a course, crafting goals and objectives, techniques for moving explanations from the concreate to the abstract, using group work using case studies, and using discussions in classes). The team hosted a content review with community college educators and the pilot has been evaluated by 12 members of the target population. Their suggestions for improvement included. In addition to addressing these concerns, the revised pilot includes a modified interactive experience, Viewers are now able leave comments that can be read and replied to by course leaders or other individuals viewing the material.