IVLE4C a Conceptual Learning Environment for Teaching Enterprise Cybersecurity

The authors are working to improve students’ understanding of and classroom experience with enterprise cybersecurity. Central to this effort is development of the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment for Cybersecurity (IVLE4C), a teaching and learning tool intended for use by both teachers and students. The authors are endeavoring to incorporate into IVLE4C best practices from the knowledge domains of education, model-based systems engineering, and cybersecurity. A modern digital enterprise is a large-scale, complex system of systems. Enterprise cybersecurity is a special subset of the larger knowledge domain that merits special consideration when instructing students who lack relevant work experience. This lack of work experience creates a gap in students’ knowledge about the structure, operation, and control of a modern digital enterprise. Our guiding precept – coined Greer’s Rule of Thumb – is that: it is impossible to defend what cannot be visualized and described. Therefore, it is essential to address the student enterprise knowledge gap before attempting to teach the means for assuring enterprise cybersecurity. Viste and Skartveit (2004) propose using an interactive virtual learning environment with reality abstraction models when teaching the structure, operation, and control of a large-scale complex system. The creation of a virtual model enables a modern digital enterprise to be brought into the classroom. This allows for learning that is complementary to experiential learning that occurs during an internship and, possibly, a viable alternative when internships are unavailable or come later in a curriculum path. Once developed, a library of models representing different digital enterprise types can be used to accelerate student enterprise cybersecurity education in a controlled classroom environment. During the presentation, the authors will provide an update on the use of model-based system engineering practices and how they are being integrated into IVLE4C for developing a tailored, enterprise risk management strategy. This approach is consistent with guidance provided in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. Research shows model-based systems engineering is increasingly being used for developing engineered cybersecurity solutions. An example of this is research performed by Robles-Ramirez et.al. (2020) on the application of model-based Cybersecurity Engineering for Connected and Automated Vehicles. Key is the notion of turning a cyber-attack surface into a trust boundary at targeted levels. IVLE4C version 1.0 is currently being used to teach Cyber Supply Chain Security at UNCW. Version 2.0 is a dynamic data driven web application, that is being developed for teaching Enterprise Security

ICT in Higher Education: a case-study of mediated blended-learning

Teaching in on-line and collaborative situations requires a variety of responses including changes in pedagogy as instructors taking the role of facilitators of information while guiding students toward solutions. In order for online learning to be successful, therefore, teachers as well as learners will need to explore new roles in the teaching-learning relationship. In this paper, the authors propose to examine how educators can mediate instruction by first designing their course goals and objectives and then consider how the on-line environment can best serve the instructional objectives and plan appropriate activities and assessment. We seek to explore the use of online environments as the bridge between real world and reflective knowledge

Enaction-Based Artificial Intelligence: Toward Coevolution with Humans in the Loop

This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of artifical life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly integrate the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from the environment. This proposition does not however resolve that of the relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making). Such reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues, thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways

Student engagement in virtual space

In this paper, a university course (subject or unit of study) that currently enjoys positive formal student reviews is used as a case study to demonstrate how theoretical knowledge about student engagement is effectively put into practice. This investigation identifies key aspects that have contributed to the positive student feedback with particular emphasis on student engagement online, or in virtual space. The investigation involves identifying what is considered good practice with respect to student engagement and then benchmarking the case study course against this. A key contribution of this paper is the presentation of practical examples demonstrating how the current theory is effectively realised in practice. The conclusion was that the course complied with key elements of what is considered good practice and successfully engaged students. Other practitioners may use the examples in their own context to help inform the practice of engaging students when teaching in virtual space

Sharing practice, problems and solutions for institutional change

This chapter critiques the roles of different forms of representation of practice as part of an institutional change process. It discusses how these representations can be used both to design and to share learning activities at the various levels of decision-making in a university. We illustrate our arguments with empirical data gathered on change processes associated with an institution-wide change programme: the introduction of a new virtual learning environment (VLE). In particular, we describe a case study of the introduction of the VLE tools in a business course. We focus on two particular forms of representations to describe the essence of the innovation: a pedagogical pattern and a visual learning design. We argue that pedagogical patterns and learning design have emerged as parallel approaches to describing practice in recent years. Despite their very different origins, both provide complementary representations, which emphasize different aspects of the practice being described. We are attempting to combine these approaches. We briefly outline the Open University Learning Design initiative, of which this work is part, and describe its key underpinning philosophies. We believe our approach provides a vehicle for enabling a better articulation of design principles and the discussion of issues concerning the re-use of educational resources and activities

Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

Leading Change through User Experience: How End Users Are Changing the Library

Cline Library is centrally located on the Northern Arizona University (NAU) campus in Flagstaff, Arizona. The library has a staff of sixty-two, and an additional forty-six student staff. According to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, NAU is classified as “R2: Doctoral Universities—Higher Research Activity.” Founded in 1899 with twenty-three students, NAU is now a public university with over 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students who learn on campus and online, across the state and beyond. NAU has built a reputation for research and scientific discovery, and over 1,000 undergraduates present at the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium. From the beginning, NAU placed students at the center, and students are the driving force behind what Cline Library does. Through a strategic planning process now underway, users and staff imagine the future for Cline Library as a people-focused experiential learning environment, which is dynamic, is proactive to user needs, and promotes both individual discovery and creative collaboration. The library’s newly crafted mission and vision state

Integrated Virtual Learning Environment for Cybersecurity (IVLE4C)

The authors are working to improve students’ understanding of and classroom experience with enterprise cybersecurity. Central to this effort is development of the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment for Cybersecurity (IVLE4C), a teaching and learning tool intended for use by both teachers and students. The authors are endeavoring to incorporate into IVLE4C best practices from the knowledge domains of education, model-based systems engineering, and cybersecurity. A modern digital enterprise is a large-scale, complex system of systems. Enterprise cybersecurity is a special subset of the larger knowledge domain that merits special consideration when instructing students who lack relevant work experience. This lack of work experience creates a gap in students’ knowledge about the structure, operation, and control of a modern digital enterprise. Our guiding precept – coined Greer’s Rule of Thumb – is that: it is impossible to defend what cannot be visualized and described. Therefore, it is essential to address the student enterprise knowledge gap before attempting to teach the means for assuring enterprise cybersecurity. Viste and Skartveit (2004) propose using an interactive virtual learning environment with reality abstraction models when teaching the structure, operation, and control of a large-scale complex system. The creation of a virtual model enables a modern digital enterprise to be brought into the classroom. This allows for learning that is complementary to experiential learning that occurs during an internship and, possibly, a viable alternative when internships are unavailable or come later in a curriculum path. Once developed, a library of models representing different digital enterprise types can be used to accelerate student enterprise cybersecurity education in a controlled classroom environment. During the presentation, the authors will provide an update on the use of model-based system engineering practices and how they are being integrated into IVLE4C for developing a tailored, enterprise risk management strategy. This approach is consistent with guidance provided in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. Research shows model-based systems engineering is increasingly being used for developing engineered cybersecurity solutions. An example of this is research performed by Robles-Ramirez et.al. (2020) on the application of model-based Cybersecurity Engineering for Connected and Automated Vehicles. Key is the notion of turning a cyber-attack surface into a trust boundary at targeted levels. IVLE4C version 1.0 is currently being used to teach Cyber Supply Chain Security at UNCW. Version 2.0 is a dynamic data driven web application, that is being developed for teaching Enterprise Security

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed