A Customized Educational Booster for Online Students in Cybersecurity Education

Mohamed Rahouti, Kaiqi Xiong

2019

Abstract

Real-world lab experiments have been an integral part of computer science and engineering curriculums. However, human and computing resources as well as financial support to courses may be limited at many universities ranging from small to large universities and from liberal arts colleges to top research universities as there is a dramatic increase of student enrollments in computer science and engineering for the past ten years. Nowadays, like many other universities nation wide, University of South Florida (USF) in collaboration with the Cyber Florida center offers online cyber security degrees as well as certificates. Throughout such programs, online students are expected to acquire knowledge via an interdisciplinary set of core courses prior to taking a deep dive into one of four following concentrations: cyber intelligence, digital forensics, information assurance and computer security fundamentals. However, when it comes to training student with real-world cyber security labs, both instructors and students face various challenges with regard to resources and virtual environment for exploring and running a broad range of security experiments and tests. In order to achieve the goal of our funded NSF project, in this paper we will discuss our teaching contributions to the development of a broad range of cyber security labs, facilitation of applied cryptography learning through experimental modules, and our customized virtual machine that fits the needs of various online computer networking and security courses. Specifically, we will first present our methodology for the design of our experimental modules and then present in details our pre-built Linux-based portable virtual machine. Those learning and experimental modules have been developed at different levels to meet the need of students with different academic and industrial backgrounds.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Rahouti M. and Xiong K. (2019). A Customized Educational Booster for Online Students in Cybersecurity Education.In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-367-4, pages 535-541. DOI: 10.5220/0007767205350541

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu19,
author={Mohamed Rahouti and Kaiqi Xiong},
title={A Customized Educational Booster for Online Students in Cybersecurity Education},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2019},
pages={535-541},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007767205350541},
isbn={978-989-758-367-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - A Customized Educational Booster for Online Students in Cybersecurity Education
SN - 978-989-758-367-4
AU - Rahouti M.
AU - Xiong K.
PY - 2019
SP - 535
EP - 541
DO - 10.5220/0007767205350541