Self-assessment of Knowledge Levels in the Subjects of Cyber Attacks and Defense in a Cybersecurity Awareness Education Workshop
Te‐Shun Chou, Tijjani Mohammed · 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2024
During the past couple of years, an online virtualized student-centric based learning system, Competitive Labs-as-a-Service (CLaaS), for cybersecurity education has been developed to prepare students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills.The system included ten identical learning environments that allowed for interaction among each environment, which made the learning system as a whole more like a realistic network environment.The system could be used in any cybersecurity related undergraduate and graduate courses.It would help students understand the latest cybersecurity technologies.Furthermore, it would provide oncampus and distance education students with opportunities to learn and practice cyberattack and cyber defense techniques used in the real world.In order to maximize the positive impact of the system on cybersecurity education, a two-day workshop was held at East Carolina University (ECU) in the summer of 2019.The workshop was hosted by the Department of Technology Systems (TSYS) and executed in a train-the-trainer format.Nineteen college instructors from Southeast United States attended the workshop and participated in an exit survey.The survey included a set of categories each containing questions to evaluate the workshop design and whether the participants thought the system would be suitable and helpful to students' learning cybersecurity.Based on the survey outcomes, the development team could then make proper adjustments to improve the effectiveness of the system.In this paper, the design of the workshop was described.In addition, the paper discussed the survey results and focused on the self-assessment of knowledge in the subjects of cybersecurity category.