Julie A. Rursch

IT-Adventures: A Program to Spark IT Interest in High School Students Using Inquiry-Based Learning With Cyber Defense, Game Design, and Robotics

The IT-Adventures program is dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of information technology among high school students using inquiry-based learning focused on three content areas: cyber defense, game design programming, and robotics. The program combines secondary, post-secondary, and industry partnerships in educational programming, competitive events, and service learning projects targeted at high school students to accomplish its goals. This paper provides details about the IT-Adventures program as well as the capstone event for students-the IT-Olympics. Project assessment findings, such as differences between students who compete in different content areas, and descriptive measures about the participants are also provided.

Utilizing Structural Equation Modeling and Social Cognitive Career Theory to Identify Factors in Choice of IT as a Major

In the United States, the number of students entering into and completing degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas has declined significantly over the past decade. Although modest increases have been shown in enrollments in computer-related majors in the past 4 years, the prediction is that even in 3 to 4 years when these students graduate, there will be shortages of computer-related professionals for industry. The challenge on which this article focuses is attracting students to select an information technology (IT) field such as computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, or information systems as a major when many high schools do not offer a single computer course, and high school counselors, families, and friends do not provide students with accurate information about the field. The social cognitive career theory (SCCT) has been used extensively within counseling and career psychology as a method for understanding how individuals develop vocational interests, make occupational choices, and achieve success within their chosen field. In this article, the SCCT model identifies factors that specifically influence high school students to select a major in an IT-related discipline. These factors can then be used to develop new or enhance existing IT-related activities for high school students. Our work demonstrates that both interest and outcome expectations have a significant positive impact on choice to major. Interest also is found to mediate the effects of self-efficacy and outcome expectations on choice of major. Overall, the model predicts a good portion of variance in the ultimate outcome of whether or not an individual chooses to major in IT.

IT-Adventures: Turning high school students “ON” to information technology

The IT-Adventures program is dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of information technology among high school students using inquiry-based learning focused on three content areas: cyber defense, game design programming and robotics. The target audience for this project is high school students, especially those students who previously have not exhibited an interest in studying IT, as well as high school teachers, not necessarily information technology teachers, who would like to enhance their skills and teaching abilities in the IT area. The program combines educational programming, competitive events and service learning projects to accomplish its goals. This paper provides details about the IT-Adventures program, as well as the capstone event for students - the IT-Olympics. Lessons learned and demographic data from the first year are presented. Work being conducted in the second year of the program (the 2008–2009 academic year) is briefly discussed.

Security across the curriculum and beyond

Societys dependency on information technology has drastically outpaced educational curricula and the opportunities that universities and higher education institutes provide to students from both technical (e.g., computer engineering, computer science) and non-technical majors. To increase the opportunities for all students to learn how protect themselves as individuals and others as professionals from numerous cyber threats the focus of this work is to identify gaps in engineering curricula and present novel approaches to fulfill the growing and diverse needs of cyber security education. The overall objective of this paper is to make security education accessible, relevant, and tangible across educational curricula, as well as to provide the framework to extend these efforts beyond university classrooms and into community colleges and high schools. While the predominant focus, research, and innovative practices in the area of cyber security have focused on technical students at the university level, this work instead concentrates on the demographic of students that desire to learn about cyber security without having to major in computer engineering, for example. In this paper we present a three-tiered framework that provides breadth and depth to security education across multiple education levels. This all-encompassing framework for security education includes providing (1) formal literacy-based training for students of all backgrounds, (2) inquiry-based learning through security- and technically-focused student groups and activities, and (3) classical technical·based initiatives. For each of these respective areas, previous research and efforts are discussed as well as the innovative practices that we have developed to address identified educational gaps.

Workshop: Teaching computer security literacy to the masses: A practical approach

We are losing the battle in cyber security. We heavily rely on technology as the main defense, instead of recognizing that the easiest attack vectors are the people who operate the computers. The general public does not understand the decisions they make each and every day have security implications for themselves, their projects and their companies. Since people are a primary target, education is one of the “secret weapons” in the cyber security battlefield. Further, if everyday users are the targets, then all audiences, not just technical staff, need training and education in cyber security basics. We argue that computer security literacy is not only the next step in computer security defense; it may be one of the most important steps we can take. Through this workshop we want to encourage the profession to reach out to the populous and help make them security literate. The goal of the workshop is to provide an alternative approach to teaching Computer Security Literacy. This approach, developed at Iowa State University, demonstrates how Computer Security Literacy courses for non-technical students benefit them in their daily lives, now as students and in the future as working professionals.