With the high demand of the nation for next generation cybersecurity experts, it is important to design and provide hands-on labs for students at the K-12 level in order to increase their interest in cybersecurity and enhance their confidence in learning cybersecurity skills at the young age. This poster reports some preliminary analysis results from the 2016 GenCyber summer camp held at Old Dominion University (ODU), which is part of a nationwide grant program funded by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This poster also demonstrates the design of three hands-on labs which have been devised to be age-appropriate for middle and high school students

He, Wu

Jiang, Peng

Tian, Xin

Xin, Chunsheng

English

Old Dominion University

Old Dominion UniversityODU Digital CommonsElectrical & Computer Engineering FacultyPublications Electrical & Computer Engineering2017Teaching Hands-On Cyber Defense Labs toMiddle School and High School Students: OurExperience from GenCyber CampsPeng JiangOld Dominion UniversityXin TianOld Dominion UniversityChunsheng XinOld Dominion University, cxin@odu.eduWu HeOld Dominion University, whe@odu.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/ece_fac_pubsPart of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons, and the Information SecurityCommonsThis Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Electrical & Computer Engineering at ODU Digital Commons. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For moreinformation, please contact digitalcommons@odu.edu.Repository CitationJiang, Peng; Tian, Xin; Xin, Chunsheng; and He, Wu, "Teaching Hands-On Cyber Defense Labs to Middle School and High SchoolStudents: Our Experience from GenCyber Camps" (2017). Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications. 182.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/ece_fac_pubs/182Original Publication CitationJiang, P., Tian, X., Xin, C., & He, W. (2017). Teaching hands-on cyber defense labs to middle school and high school students: Our experiencefrom GenCyber camps. Paper presented at the EdMedia 2017, Washington DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017.Teaching Hands-On Cyber Defense Labs to Middle School and High SchoolStudents: Our Experience from GenCyber CampsPeng JiangXin TianChunsheng XinWu HeOld Dominion UniversityUnited Statespjian001@odu.eduxtian@odu.educxin@odu.eduwhe@odu.eduAbstract: With the high demand of the nation for next generation cybersecurity experts, it is important to design and provide hands-on labs for students at the K-12 level in order to increase their interest in cybersecurity and enhance their confidence in learning cybersecurity skillsat the young age. This poster reports some preliminary analysis results from the 2016 GenCyber summer camp held at Old Dominion University (ODU), which is part of a nationwide grant program funded by the NationalSecurity Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This poster also demonstrates the design of three hands-on labs which have been devised to be age-appropriate for middle and high school students. Keywords: cybersecurity, hands-on labs, k-12 students-640-EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017Overview:A wealth of hands-on labs for teaching computer security and information assurance(IA) have been developed for college students.  With the high demand of the nation fornext generation cybersecurity experts, it is important to design and provide hands-onlabs for students at the K-12 level in order to increase their interest in cybersecurity andenhance their confidence in learning cybersecurity skills at the young age. In this poster,the authors report some preliminary analysis in the 2016 GenCyber summer camp heldat Old Dominion University (ODU), which is part of a nationwide grant program fundedby the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).Our camps provide interactive, hands-on learning activities to educate students aboutcyber  security  as  a  Science,  Technology,  Engineering,  and  Mathematics  (STEM)education and career pathway. The 2016 GenCyber summer camps at ODU provide aweek-long training for the middle school  and high school  students in three aspects:cybersecurity tutorials, panels, invited talks, three hands-on labs, and two field trips tothe Navy and interactions with Navy cybersecurity experts. This poster demonstratesthe design of three hands-on labs which have been devised to be age-appropriate formiddle and high school students. We devised these labs based on the input from fourhigh school teachers as well as instructional faculty in college of education, and madeimprovements after we tested them with our camp students. In addition, we surveyedmiddle  school  and  high  school  students  immediately  after  they  completed  the  labsduring the camps in terms of their perceptions and learning experience with our hands-on labs. Since there are few studies related to the cybersecurity hands-on lab trainingfor students at the K-12 level, the data analysis results and findings from the survey willbe beneficial  for improving K-12 cybersecuirty educational curriculum and helping todevelop better hands-on labs for K-12 students. -641-EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017Significance and Relevance of the Topic:Hands-on  cybersecurity  labs  allow  students  to  learn  cybersecurity  concepts  andprinciples  by  exploring  and  applying  conceptual  knowledge  to  real-world  situations.Typically learners are provided with worked-out step-by-step instructions to facilitate thestudy  of  cybersecurity  concepts  and  techniques.  Increased  use  of  hands-oncybersecurity  labs  has  the  potential  to  improve  student  learning  of  cybersecuritytechniques and principles. Currently,  the majority of hands-on cybersecurity labs aredesigned  for  college students  and  beyond.  There  are  limited  numbers  of  hands-oncybersecurity labs that are age-appropriate for middle school and high school students.Simply using hands-on cybersecurity lab designed for college students to teach middleschool  and  high  school  students  is  inappropriate  and  does  not  work  well  becausemiddle school  and high school  students  have much less  computer  experience thancollege students. It has been reported that some college students also have difficulty incompleting the hands-on cybersecurity labs (Guo et al., 2013). Thus,  it is important todesign and provide age-appropriate hands-on cybersecurity labs for K-12 students atthe K-12 level. Otherwise, they may lose interest, motivation and confidence in learningcybersecurity skills, which will be counterproductive to the nation’s efforts in increasingnumber of future cybersecurity professionals.  Before our 2016 GenCyber summer camps, the authors collaborated with high schoolteachers  and  educational  faculty  to  discuss  and  design  hands-on  labs  materialsspecifically for middle and high school students. During the camps, the authors alsoworked hard to update the lab materials based on the students’ feedback and adopteddifferent instructional strategies while teaching the labs to them. After the camps, wemade further improvements to our teaching materials. One of the major goals in theposter is to illustrate the improved hands-on labs materials for the middle and highschool students and report our analysis of the survey data collected during our summercamps.  Content:-642-EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017The  poster  will  contain  two  parts.  First,  we  will  show our  improved hands-on  labsmaterials and hands-out designed for middle school and high school students. The firsthands-on lab is network traffic tracking and analysis.  Students in this lab learn the basicnetwork structure and rules to regulate network characteristics such as cabling types,access method, data transfer speed, and physical topologies. Then they learn how totrack the trace of the data packets that are transferred in the network to understand howto do cyber defense from the very beginning. The second lab focuses on how to setup aLinux based firewall (pfSense) to protect a private network based on the knowledge ofnetwork protocols from the first hands-on lab. The second lab is divided into two parts.The first part helps them to understand the vulnerabilities of existing network protocolsand ports opened in each system; the second part illustrates what is firewall and how toconfigure  firewall  rules  to  block  certain  protocols  or  ports  which  are  vulnerable  topotential attacks.  The third hands-on lab is Wi-Fi password cracking and informationhiding. Students learn how to crack a Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) key, and a Wi-FiProtected Access (WPA) passphrase using the aircrack-ng utility,  which is a suite oftools for Wi-Fi  network security.  After cracking the WEP key and WPA passphrase,students then decrypt  the network  traffic  using airdecap-ng, e.g.,  they can view theHTML  content  after  decryption.  Students  who  have  successfully  exploited  thevulnerabilities of Wi-Fi network will have a better awareness of the need to use strongpasswords to protect their WiFi networks. We will  show the quantitative  and qualitative results  from student  surveys.  The keyfindings are as follows.  Overall,  most  students  agreed  that  the  hands-on  labs  were  enjoyable,  andexpressed their interest in learning more concepts and doing more cybersecuritylabs.  Overall, there was not a significant difference between male and female middleand highs school students in completing the hands-on labs without any help. Butgirls (Mean: 3.80, Std. Deviation:1.874) seemed less confident than boys (Mean:4.61, Std. Deviation:2.097) in terms of completing the hands-on lab on their ownwithout any help.-643-EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017 We  also  summarized  a  list  of  issues  and  challenges  students  had  whencompleting the hands-on labs.  ACKNOWLEDGMENTThis work is partially supported by the National Security Agency (NSA) under the awardH98230-16-1-0245.  -644-EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017

Teaching Hands-On Cyber Defense Labs to Middle School and High School Students: Our Experience from GenCyber Camps

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Teaching Hands-On Cyber Defense Labs to Middle School and High School Students: Our Experience from GenCyber Camps

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