An Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference (ITiCSE) working group is examining the educational missions and curricula of two and four-year institutions with respect to information assurance education. Participants in this workshop will define and describe the distinct and complementary missions of two and four-year institutions with respect to information assurance education, describe the differences and similarities of the educational programs at two and four-year institutions, and document the challenges and opportunities for information assurance course articulation between two and four-year institutions. Travel support is provided for nine information assurance educators and researchers to attend and participate. This workshop continues the work of similar 2009 and 2010 working groups which reviewed the state of information assurance education throughout the world and created a detailed list of critical information assurance topics to be used as the foundation for curriculum development.
The purpose of this grant was to fund a working group at the 2011 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) to examine the educational missions and curricula of two and four-year institutions with respect to information assurance (IA) education. More specifically, the working group defined and described the distinct and complementary missions of two and four-year institutions with respect to IA education, described the differences and similarities of the educational programs at two and four-year institutions, and documented the challenges and opportunities for IA course articulation between two and four-year institutions. By doing this now, the working group began to lay a foundation for cooperation and coordination between two and four-year institutions offering IA degrees. The working consisted of twelve distinguished members of the IA education community for four countries and a variety of two- and four-year institutions. The findings and recommendations of this working group could have significant impact on IA education in the US and abroad and have far reaching implications of how IA is perceived and engaged by the public. Based on the examination of a small subset of two-year, four-year and international degree programs, the working group concluded the following. First, there are a large variety of two-year and four-year IA educational programs and the variety seems to be increasing. Second, IA degree programs face many of the same articulation problems that other disciplines face. This is to a large extent due to the difference purposes of the two-year (normally terminal) AAS degree and the four-year BS or BA degree. Third, in the US and abroad, the majority of IA related degrees seem to be at the graduate level, and particularly at the masters level. The working group speculated that the large variation in the type of degree programs at both two-year and four-year institutions is due primarily to two factors. The first is the absence of a set of curricular guidelines around which institutions can build their programs and the second is a lack of a clear understanding of the needs of the employers of the graduates of these programs. In order to make progress on the articulation challenges, the working group concluded that it is necessary for two-year and four-year institutions to develop closer and more functional relationships. Until that occurs, course articulation between AAS and BS/BA degrees will remain a significant challenge due to the very distinct purposes of these degrees. Adopting a student learning outcome approach to curricular guidelines is likely to be the most fruitful approach to a broad solution to this challenge. Finally, the working group recommended that an appropriate organization engage the broad IA educational community in an effort to create meaningful curricular guidelines using a student learning outcomes approach. Such an effort would create coherence in the discipline, provide a basis for assessing the quality of educational programs and the skills of their graduates, and facilitate articulation between two-year and four-year degree programs.
