Developing an information assurance curriculum to serve traditional and non-traditional student learners

ABSTRACT

Although summer camp programs are commonly part of secondary education programs, creating a sustainable learning experience has often been challenging. Currently, there is a severe shortage of a highly-skilled cyber-security workforce, and the fact that cyber-security topics are not commonly part of most of the secondary education experience for most students does little to improve this situation in the long term. Cyber-security materials are generally not included in secondary education programs due to the lack of instructional expertise as well as the essential cybersecurity teaching tools, laboratories, and manuals for teachers and students. To address these challenges, the goal of the two week CyberStar camp on cybersecurity at the University of Arizona Biosphere 2 is to overcome these obstacles and provide easy to learn and use training environments that are similar to real-world systems. In this presentation, we will address how the CyberStar camp experience, combined with teacher development and access to online learning material, will create a sustainable learning community in secondary education programs to encourage students to consider cyber-security as a career path.