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Design and Development of a Modular K-12 Cybersecurity Curriculum

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

Pre-College Engineering Education in the Formal Classroom

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--32591

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/32591

Download Count

1188

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Paper Authors

biography

Giti Javidi University of South Florida Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-2139-7807

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Dr. Giti Javidi received her BS from University of Central Oklahoma and MS and PhD from University of South Florida, Tampa. Prior to joining academia as a faculty, she worked for industry for several years including IBM as a software engineer. Dr. Javidi has more than 18 years of experience in teaching, research, industry and consulting services. She Joined USFSM IT program in fall 2016 as a n Associate Professor of Information technology and Cybersecurity, from Virginia State University (VSU) where she held the position of Professor of Computer Science. While at VSU, she played a pivotal role in developing and advancing the Computer Science program. She also provided IT training and consulting services to worldwide customers through her consulting company, Novus Kinesis. Dr. Javidi’s research cuts across several disciplines within computer science, information technology, and education. Her research interests include human-computer interaction, user interface design, information visualization, and educational data mining. A unifying theme of her research is the focus on computer science and IT education. In recent years, while at USF, she has also been interested in IoT and Cybersecurity education. She is also very passionate about the role of women in IT. Dr. Javidi has received several prestigious awards. She was awarded the 2017 Women of Influence and 2018 Women in Leadership and Philanthropy award for her research. Dr. Javidi has been featured in Harold Tribune, Sarasota Magazine, Florida High Tech Corridor and several other venues. Her scholarly research has been published in peer-reviewed national and international journals and she has presented at several conferences and summits as an invited speaker. A long-time advocate for increasing participation and retention of women and marginalized population in STEM fields, Dr. Javidi has worked tirelessly on a number of projects in this domain over the past many years. In the recent years, she has been conducting research on exploring gender bias in IT and its impact on retention and recruitment in the field. She has been a longtime supporter of National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and its mission, having spearheaded the establishment of an Academic Affiliation between NCWIT and VSU and most recently, USFSM. At the local and national level, she has collaborated with several organizations in their efforts to develop methods and strategies for increasing diversity in STEM. Dr. Javidi has been the recipient of a number of NSF, NASA, Google and Microsoft grants. She has also been a long time member of ACM and IEEE among a number other national and international organizations.

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biography

Ehsan Sheybani University of South Florida

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Dr. Ehsan Sheybani has earned BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering from UF, FSU, and USF respectively. His main research area has been applications of communication, signal processing, and data analysis. He has been involved in teaching, practicing, researching, and consulting applications of DSP in technology, system analysis, and data sciences for the past 20 years. He has a long list of publications and research grants including projects with NASA, NSF, NIH, DoD, DEd, and industry partners. Currently he serves as a faculty at the University of South Florida.

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Abstract

The huge shortage of personnel with sufficient knowledge, skills and abilities in cybersecurity field is already taking a toll locally and globally. Part of this deficiency is due to absence of minorities and women in technical fields (population issue). The other contributor to this problem is the lack of encouragement, interest, and engagement at the K12 for students to find careers in challenging fields such as cybersecurity (pipeline issue). To remedy this, the authors have taken an innovative approach to design and develop a modular K12 cybersecurity curriculum. The innovative techniques used in the proposed curriculum to incorporate cybersecurity concepts include, but are not limited: 1. Taking a holistic approach to make cybersecurity awareness the minimum requirement for K12 college-bound students, 2. Using a train-the-trainer model to train high school teachers to teach cybersecurity, integrate cybersecurity concepts in their classrooms, and promote cybersecurity as an attractive career path, 3. Introducing creative, modular, and hands-on activities to teach programming, networking, and other cybersecurity-related topics in a fun and attractive manner, 4. Developing case studies, real-world examples, and projects that connect cybersecurity concepts to terrorism and radicalization, social, political, and financial hacking, military strategic missions, recruitment of extremist and religious groups, etc., 5. Adding leadership and entrepreneurship skills to the mix to prepare students for real-world problems. 6. Assessing the delivery methods, timing, format, pacing and outcomes alignment to provide a baseline for future research. Design and development of a modular, scalable, and novel cybersecurity curriculum will help train the future workforce. This will be done in coordination, integration, and collaboration with other/existing programs to leverage and/or expand STEM educational research.

Javidi, G., & Sheybani, E. (2019, June), Design and Development of a Modular K-12 Cybersecurity Curriculum Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32591

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