Collaborative Research: SaTC: EDU: RoCCeM: Bringing Robotics, Cybersecurity and Computer Science to the Middled School Classroom

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Cybersecurity education is crucial to training, developing skills, and improving awareness. This is particularly true at a young age, given the increasing societal relevance of computers and the Internet. There is a great need for computational thinking to adequately understand key concepts in cybersecurity, as well as offer a powerful lens on computation as a whole. To address this need and opportunity, this project will develop a scalable, accessible curriculum engaging middle school students to improve recruitment and retention in cybersecurity and computer science. The primarily project-based curriculum will focus on block-based programming of robots, spanning computing and cybersecurity. Key cybersecurity principles will be introduced in a social context involving human-to-human communication challenges, then mapped to technical skills using a collaborative, virtual robotics platform. Students can connect computational challenges with interpersonal situations, becoming familiar with the foundations of cybersecurity and preparing themselves for responsible social interactions online.The project will produce sorely-needed K-12 cybersecurity educational materials that are engaging, rigorous, and relevant to current cybersecurity trends. Making such trends and corresponding security strategies concrete, accessible, and relevant for middle school students with little to no background in programming is a significant challenge. The team will develop a 9-week modular curriculum spanning computing fundamentals and block-based programming, network communication, introductory cybersecurity concepts, and cooperative cybersecurity challenges. The project will ground cybersecurity principles in human-human interactions so that young learners can understand the key concepts in cybersecurity that are fundamental to interactions that occur in the outside the classroom. The project will have broad impact by providing an engaging environment and rigorous tasks to raise students' interest in cybersecurity, computing and robotics, and by flattening the learning curve required to engage with hands-on cybersecurity through an intuitive block-based language. After pilot testing in multiple schools, the project will provide a clear path to scale up to state-wide implementation in Tennessee.This project is supported by the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program, which funds proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and in this case specifically cybersecurity education. The SaTC program aligns with the Federal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan and the National Privacy Research Strategy to protect and preserve the growing social and economic benefits of cyber systems while ensuring security and privacy.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.