Designing Authentic Cybersecurity Learning Experiences: Lessons from the Cybermatics Playable Case Study

This paper reports our work on an educational simulation that we call the Playable Case Study (PCS). A PCS is characterized by a fictitious narrative integrated with real-world learning activities, helping students learn skills, knowledge, and dispositions relevant to a professional career. We describe a recent pilot test of a PCS focused on the discipline of cybersecurity, emphasizing the kinds of tensions and difficulties that can arise during the development of immersive, experiential learning experiences: a) challenges accompanying the work of interdisciplinary PCS teams, particularly maintaining technical accuracy while still developing an authentic and engaging narrative; b) reconciling the opportunities provided by the philosophy of the simulation with the need to scaffold educational experiences to support students’ capabilities; and c) integrating the PCS into the classroom environment. We also provide design recommendations, in the form of questions that others can consider if they are attempting to create similar educational experiences

Theory of Experiential Career Exploration Technology (TECET): Increasing cybersecurity career interest through playable case studies

There is a large demand to fill cybersecurity jobs. To alleviate this need, it is important to generate interest in cybersecurity as a career. One way to do this is through job shadowing and internships. Using design science principles, we have built and tested a playable case study (PCS) where participants can act out a virtual internship and learn relevant cybersecurity skills. We ran a study with students in introductory university courses where they played through a simulated internship at a penetration testing company called CyberMatics. In the study we showed that a PCS format helps students 1) better understand what skills and traits are needed for, 2) more firmly decide whether to pursue, and 3) increase their confidence in their ability to succeed in a career in cybersecurity. Through this study we propose the Theory of Experiential Career Exploration Technology (TECET)

Big rhetoric: The art and rhetoric of spectacle in classical and contemporary experience

ABSTRACT Spectacle earns its special status by enthralling its spectators: It "speaks" to its audience in a language of hyperbole, magnitude, and wonder. Such strategies are designed, in part, to overwhelm viewers, mythologize the subject, and brand its representations as icons of power. At the same time, however, spectacle can serve to liberate the viewer's imagination, activate a group's collective memory, and embrace viewer, subject, and the objects represented in a coherent and collective identity. I will call these strategies Big Rhetoric, a discourse of outsized objects (or texts) and overwhelming events (or performances) that operates, alternatively, to aggrandize, captivate, and ennoble its audience. My use of the term Big Rhetoric differs from its use by rhetorical scholars who refer to the "rhetorical turn" in an assortment of disciplines. My discussion approaches the study of Big Rhetoric as a type of communication and a means of persuasion. The study aims to investigate the use of scaled objects as a disruptive form of rhetoric and links the dramatic expression of big objects in Hellenistic Rome with the novel strategies of representation cultivated by the "nationalizing" spectacle of the 19th century world expositions. In Chapter 1 the concept of spectacle is discussed based on Guy Debord's theory of representation (having the characteristics of enslavement, domination, and separation). The underlying premise in Debord's work is that forms of spectacle in a capitalist society attempt to separate society from the real by transforming reality into a commodity. My dissertation complicates this one view of spectacle by introducing the idea of Big Rhetoric as an expression of magnitude and as an example of disturbance. I define the concept in the introduction and then apply it in each chapter by addressing such problems as how Big Rhetoric is made, the use of Big Rhetoric by political and other social institutions, and how Big Rhetoric and the practice of "speaking loudly" can be used to modify and reshape the built environment. Chapters 2 and 3 answer some of these questions by exploring the strategic use of the concept in two "golden ages": The golden age of Hellenistic Rome and the golden age of 19th century America, broadly considered. The two case studies provide especially rich sites for analyzing Big Rhetoric: these rhetorical texts upset expectations of normalcy and compensated for that disturbance with "delectare" (delight). For the penultimate section of this study, I provide a reading of Frank Gehry's proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial in the D.C. National Mall, which based on the previous chapters, becomes an example of the persistent use of memorials as a medium for speaking loudly in a contemporary dialect. In examining western traditions of Big Rhetoric, this dissertation advances a theoretical framework for considering the rhetorical practice of magnitude that can be utilized in future rhetorical work.</p

Microcore: A Playable Case Study for Improving Adolescents’ Argumentative Writing in a Workplace Context

A playable case study is an immersive, transmedia story controlled by a puppetmaster (i.e., teacher), but played by participants who advance the plot through their contributions and interactions with fictional characters. They are also explicitly educational, consisting of both the immersive, transmedia story, as well as in-game and out-of-game materials provided for educational scaffolding and reflection. We present the Microcore playable case study to illustrate the potential of this new type of experiential simulation that incorporates aspects of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) to increase immersion. We present results from a pilot test of Microcore with an undergraduate course, identifying design strategies that worked well and others that led to improvements that are currently being incorporated. We also provide questions to prompt future designers of playable case studies and discuss our findings in a broader context of educational simulations.