The project involves the design and development of a pedagogical alternate reality game (ARG) teaching Cybersecurity and Computer Science (CS) concepts to first-year, undergraduate students. The objectives of this project are to engage undergraduates with authentic problems demonstrating the relevance of Cybersecurity to the world around them; to highlight the role of computers in both solving problems and constructing problems; and to challenge students with creative puzzle-solving that exercises role-play and "adversarial thinking." Designing an ARG with Cybersecurity topics will provide research data on how essential Cybersecurity issues might be brought into introductory course materials, and be communicated to audiences who are unfamiliar with programming, networks, or operating systems. Since this audience has little prior CS knowledge, the design of course materials and tools will be appropriate for other introductory programs, such as high school clubs and extracurricular STEM programs. Students enrolled in these courses will be tracked longitudinally, providing a method to assess the long-term impact of these curricular materials. The project will be an interdisciplinary effort, engaging stakeholders and educators across campus, including the departments of Education, Kinesthesiology, Liberal Arts, and Engineering Studies. The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program funds proposals that address Cybersecurity from a Trustworthy Computing Systems perspective; a Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences perspective; and proposals focusing entirely on Cybersecurity Education.
The project has two broad goals: to develop a set of modules teaching security concepts that are accessible to a wide audience, that foster curiosity in security topics, and that develop interest in CS and STEM disciplines; and to explore the relationship between ARGs and other types of cyber-competitions, finding evaluative strategies that enhance the state of knowledge in both domains, and to explore these connections using a case study. Understanding the relationship between pervasive games, ARGs, capture-the-flag contests and other cyber-competitions will facilitate scientific cross-pollination between those domains, helping to increase the effectiveness of those events. The target outcomes of the project are: to design and develop materials for a security-themed ARG to complement a set of learning outcomes appropriate for an introductory computer science course; to integrate the ARG with an introductory computer science course, as an evaluated case-study measuring its acceptance and impact; and to disseminate curricular materials, evaluation materials and lessons learned, and any software tools to other educators, so they may be assessed, modified and re-used.
