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Author(s):
William Toledo Sushil J Louis Shamik Sengupta
Conference Name
IEEE
Abstract

This Innovate Practice Full Paper presents a new game for cybersecurity learning. Cybersecurity education is critical to personal media consumption, privacy protection, and national infrastructure. We live in a world that is increasingly connected; the majority of people, particularly young people, engage with technology and social media for multiple hours per day, using the internet as a source of news, entertainment, and connection to the outside world. However, threats on the internet, including misinformation, disinformation, phishing, and multiple other cybersecurity threats grow each year. Because of this, cybersecurity is an essential skill for K-12 and all undergraduate students to learn in public schools. In this study, we asked K-12 teachers to analyze a specific game, NetDefense, designed to teach students basic cybersecurity concepts related to networking.

Concluding remarks
NetDefense specifically addresses concepts within the network communications component of the core theme of computing systems from the K-12 cybersecurity standards released by cyber.org. Before and after engaging with the game, we asked teachers a series of survey questions to determine their perceptions of the game and its utility in classrooms. Findings indicate that NetDefense improved teachers’ knowledge of network concepts. Participating teachers believed that NetDefense would help students learn these concepts and that NetDefense is an appropriate tool for this type of learning. Finally, teachers believed that student motivation to learn about and use cybersecurity concepts would increase upon playing the game. We plan to improve the game using feedback from our participants, disseminate the open source, publicly available game to all interested educators for classroom and laboratory use, and gather more data on game effectiveness.

Reference details

DOI
10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962410
Resource type
Conference Proceedings
Year of Conference
2022
Publication Area
Cybersecurity and defense
Date Published
2022-10-08
URL
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ab…

How to cite this reference:
Toledo, W., Louis, S. J., & Sengupta, S. (2022). NetDefense: A Tower Defense Cybersecurity Game for Middle and High School Students. https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962410 (Original work published)