SaTC-EDU: EAGER Enhancing Cybersecurity Education Through a Representational Fluency Model

网络安全专家必须具备几种能力：深厚的技术技能，识别和应对复杂和紧急行为的能力，掌握使用抽象和原理的能力，评估风险和处理不确定性的能力，解决问题和推理的能力，以及灵活的对抗性思维。本项目将以认知理论为基础，探讨模式化启发活动对培养学生识别和应对复杂和突发行为的能力，以及如何处理不确定性和歧义的有效性。该项目扩展了表征流利性理论，该理论已被证明是将科学和数学领域中的复杂概念有效地传授给网络安全领域的有力工具。这个项目的发现将有助于揭示表征流畅性如何塑造认知图式和培养网络安全心态。该项目的目标是：1)开发模型启发式教育活动，教授网络安全相关概念在多种表征之间的使用和翻译；2)调查学生对这些概念的表征流畅性和图式；3)调查学生图式发展与认知加工和控制变化的关系。虽然这项教育研究的背景是网络安全，学生将在本科水平，但通过本研究构建的理论和框架应该与网络安全的其他知识领域相关，并适用于不同环境下的不同水平的学生和专业人员，包括大学课堂或成人继续教育。

Cybersecurity experts must possess several abilities: deep technical skills, the capability to recognize and respond to complex and emergent behavior, mastery of using abstractions and principles, the ability to assess risk and handle uncertainty, problem-solving and reasoning skills, and facility in adversarial thinking. Based on cognitive theory, this project will investigate the efficacy of model eliciting activities for developing students' ability to recognize and respond to complex and emergent behavior, and how to handle uncertainty and ambiguity. This project extends the theory of representational fluency, which has been proven to be a powerful tool to effectively teach complex concepts in the field of Science and Mathematics to the cybersecurity domain. The findings from this project will shed light on how representational fluency can shape the cognitive schema and cultivate the cybersecurity mindset. The goals of this project are to: 1) develop model eliciting educational activities that teach network security related concepts using and translating among multiple representations, 2) investigate students' representational fluency and schema of these concepts, and 3) investigate the relationship of students' development of schema and changes in their cognitive processing and control. While the context for this educational research will be network security and the students will be at the undergraduate level, the theory and framework built through this research should be relevant to other knowledge areas in cybersecurity and applicable to different levels of students and professionals in different settings including university classroom or adult continuous education.