A League of Our Own: The Future of Cyber Defense Competitions

Numerous cyber defense competitions exist today for individuals and teams to test their cyber security skills where each team has to “win or go home.” What is missing from these competitions is a league allowing head to head competitions over the course of a season, much like a sport. Teams playing several hours every week during a ten-week season have the opportunity to improve their cyber security skills. This paper provides an overview of cyber security competitions, and how a National Cyber League can greatly expand the number of and participants in these competitions at a much lower cost leveraging virtual technologies

My Student, My Teacher: A Polytechnic Approach to Information Assurance

A polytechnic education involves the practical application of knowledge, including hands-on learning, senior projects, class projects, club activities, professional association activities, and internships. In 1824, the first polytechnic institution in the United States was the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York and today there are approximately 100 polytechnic universities. Several polytechnic institutions are leaders in teaching information assurance. Information assurance educators develop and depend on students to provide leadership in information assurance through active, engaged learning. The goal of this paper is to describe how a polytechnic approach supports information assurance education

CyberPatriot: Exploring University-High School Partnerships

Since its inception in 2008, the CyberPatriot competition has been held annually with the goal of increasing the number of technologically skilled individuals working in the field of cybersecurity. The competition is designed to address the shortage of U.S. citizens with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines by encouraging talented high school students to pursue post-secondary study leading to careers in cybersecurity. This paper describes how one university successfully partnered with a large metropolitan high school district to better reach out to talented students in both traditional and underrepresented groups

To Catch A Thief II: Computer Forensics in the Classroom

The subject of computer forensics is still new and both challenging and intriguing for students. Cal Poly Pomona has offered this course since September of 2004. The course involves both the technical and legal aspects of investigative procedures as applied to digital evidence. For the instructor, it can involve challenges not found in other areas of information systems. This paper discusses some of the triumphs and pitfalls of including computer forensics as part of an undergraduate information assurance curriculum

Making Scholarly Activity Available to the Masses: The Scaffolding of Scholarship Throughout the Undergraduate Curriculum

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focuses on improving student critical thinking, information literacy, and written communication. Rather than developing these skills through traditional methods (e.g., through senior-level, independent research), these learning outcomes are practiced through scholarly experiences. Traditional undergraduate scholarship manifests itself through terminal, senior capstone or research experiences. These, because of the economy of scale, typically reach a minority of students, often just honors students or those approached by faculty mentors. At FGCU, however, scholarly experiences are a part of the curriculum throughout the program of study, and scaffolded to build greater depth and sophistication. Presented here are examples from both a program in STEM (Marine Science) and the humanities (Music Performance). Students in Marine Science receive their first exposure to the vetting of literature and expository scientific writing within their general education science courses. Students are presented with an exercise to evaluate the credibility of web-based literature using the CRAAP test. A semester-long writing assignment has them investigate an earth-process-related problem that has societal consequences. They review and evaluate the secondary literature, prepare a first draft that is critiqued, and then submit a final version while meeting a number of milestones along the way. Students enter the major’s curriculum through a course entitled “Scientific Process”, which introduces them to all aspects of scientific research and culminates with them writing and defending a research proposal they may eventually work to completion. Numerous courses at the upper-class level are designed as scholarly focused or enriched, a branding requiring that certain criteria are met. In these courses, students often participate in genuine collaborative research projects that can lead to student publication and enhance faculty productivity. Finally, as a senior, the capstone course requires that they produce a scholarly poster or oral presentation that is either given in the class or within a university forum. Music Performance students’ experiences track towards demonstration of content mastery in the artifact of a senior recital. In this public display of scholarly achievement a student presents repertoire from major historical eras on his or her instrument or voice for an hour or more. Additionally the students complete a comprehensive document analyzing music in terms of performance practice (how and why certain music should be performed to meet historically appropriate creations and recreations). Students enter this major their freshman year after an audition process and immediately begin developing the skills required to demonstrate proficiency as professional musicians. Experiences performing in ensembles and in private lessons cultivate listening skills to make informed musical judgments. Theory courses develop students’ abilities to hear music with their eyes. Upper level courses require students to clearly articulate in writing their thoughts about music’s formal properties, why certain music requires particular performance considerations, and how to execute those performance requirements in their technique. The conundrum for collection of data is how to assess university-wide learning outcomes in the context of a performance. Without a tangible artifact, FGCU relies on artist teams to develop assessment procedures that accurately capture if students meet targets as demonstrated in performance. Though too early for us to have extensive assessment data, anecdotal evidence suggests students enjoy this approach and are honing their skills within these learning outcomes. We anticipate these improvements will increase graduates’ life-long learning potential, as well as their competitiveness for employment and further education

System dynamics modelling for electric and hybrid commercial vehicles adoption

Problems caused by the increasing freight transportation demand in cities call for integrated solutions where all stakeholders’ efforts are coordinated, in order to both reduce the negative impacts of freight transportation, such as pollution and congestion, and carry no disadvantages to public and private operators. Among the solutions that can be implemented for these purposes, one of the most studied and applied one is the partial or total substitution of commercial vans with low emission vehicles. Previous studies have been focused mainly on the vehicle-related factors that make such adoption sustainable for the private stakeholders. However, there is a lack of contributions that also take into account the operational aspects of a city logistics system. In order to contribute to this literature, our work develops a System Dynamics model that assesses the adoption of low emission vehicles by analysing the most important operational factors typical of a freight distribution system. Results of the simulation and the sensitivity analyses demonstrate that the adoption of low emission commercial vehicles is feasible within a reasonable time period if some strategies are put in place. For instance, public contribution including both incentives to low emission vehicles and disincentives to traditional ones could effectively increase the adoption process, along with effective advertising campaigns about the operational benefits given by such distribution model

The search for the Skunk Ape: studying the impact of an online information literacy tutorial on student writing

This paper examines the impact of an online information literacy tutorial on source selection, evaluation, and use in essays written by English Composition students. More than 250 students participated in this research, and the essays written by a sample of 60 students are examined. Citation analysis is used first to determine the average number of citations per paper, frequency of source/format type, currency and authority of sources, frequency and length of in-text citations, and frequency of correctly formatted in-text and end-of text documentation. Textual analysis is used second to determine which essays have more frequent, correctly-formatted intext citations, more paraphrases and summaries of their sources, fewer long quotes, and more source variety, among others. The results of this analysis suggest that online information literacy instruction may increase the number of sources that students locate and use. The textual analysis in this study also highlighted some deficiencies in students’ citation practices, such as discrepancies between in-text citations and sources listed in bibliographies, and these problems were present despite information literacy instruction. These results point out areas of instruction, such as integrating sources into writing, to be improved upon in future versions of the online tutorial. The findings offered here should help information literacy professionals planning to develop online tutorials hone the content of the programmes