SaTC: EDU: RUI: Enabling a New Generation of Experts by Finding and Fixing Students' Persistent Misconceptions

由安全专家众所周知的错误导致的引人注目的计算机安全漏洞流提供了一个改善网络安全教育的机会，以有效地为下一代网络安全专业人员做好准备。学生们对计算机安全应该如何工作有着根深蒂固的误解，学生们在推理安全性时依赖于这种错误的直觉。这个项目的目标是开发一系列积极的学习练习，使用视频和动手练习，来解决这些误解。学习模块将在课堂上进行验证，然后使用开源许可发布。本研究将遵循Hestenes和Halloun创建的迭代模型，但它将应用于计算机科学专业学生在计算机安全知识方面的常见误解。错误的概念将通过前后测试来识别，并用于创建可重用的安全概念清单（SCI）。来自工业界和学术界的大量志愿者专家将接受调查，以确定他们对非专家对网络安全的误解的看法。这将导致网络安全中最严重的误解列表。在多所学院和大学的志愿者指导下，学生将被问及这些主题，从而产生一个SCI，可以用来评估对这些问题的理解。管理SCI产生的数据将用于创建一套开源的主动学习模块，其中每个模块将针对清单中确定的特定误解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The stream of high-profile computer security breaches resulting from errors well-known to security experts provides an opportunity to improve cybersecurity education to effectively prepar the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Students have deeply ingrained misconceptions about how computer security ought to work, and students rely on this false intuition when reasoning about security. The goal of this project is to develop a series of active learning exercises, that use videos, and hands-on exercises, to address these misconceptions. The learning modules will be validated in the classroom, and then published using an open source license.This research will follow the iterative model created by Hestenes and Halloun, but it will be applied to common misconceptions in the computer security knowledge of computer science majors. Misconceptions will be identified through pre- and post-tests and used to create a reusable security concept inventory (SCI). A large pool of volunteer experts from industry and academia will be surveyed to determine their ideas about misconceptions that non-experts have about cybersecurity. This will result in a list of the most significant misconceptions in cybersecurity. Using volunteer instructors at multiple colleges and universities, students will be questioned about these topics resulting in a SCI that can be used to assess understanding of these issues. Data generated from administering the SCI will be used to create a set of open source active learning modules, where each module will target a specific misconception identified in the inventory.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.