Education DCL: EAGER: A Gamified Education Platform for Story-driven Educational Hacking Games to Attract Generation Z to Cyber Workforce

全球缺乏熟练和多样化的网络安全劳动力是一个紧迫的问题，危及个人、组织和国家安全。为了解决这一担忧，该项目旨在通过开发游戏化的教育平台来吸引年轻一代参与网络安全。通过使用设计科学研究(DSR)的方法和游戏化技术，该平台寻求使网络安全教育更吸引人、更容易获得和更享受。此外，它还使教育工作者能够设计定制的教育游戏，在教学中培养创造力。该平台的可定制性和可扩展性创建了一个协作生态系统，以开发、改进和共享内容，确保其持续的有效性和更广泛的影响。最终，通过使网络安全教育更加受欢迎，该项目寻求建立一个变革性的、基于游戏的教学倡议，以激励和参与不同的学生群体，特别是未被充分代表的少数族裔，以促进该领域的包容性，并为更熟练和多样化的劳动力做出贡献。该项目利用DSR方法和基于游戏的学习来创建一个身临其境的游戏化教育平台，以故事驱动的教育黑客游戏为中心。在Unity游戏引擎的支持下，该平台提供了一个动态的3D世界地图和一个故事情节，其中包括任务、进步点、奖励和发人深省的伦理决策组件。这些任务经过精心设计，以纳入基本的网络安全概念，通过现实生活中的例子促进体验式学习。该平台的主要目标包括三个关键方面：(A)通过新的游戏化元素分类和探究社区框架，使基础网络安全课程能够设计定制的课程；(B)为教育工作者提供一个方便用户的平台，以创建与现有网络安全课程无缝结合的定制任务，培养创造力和适应不同教学风格的能力；以及(C)建立一个从事扩展和完善平台、促进合作和培养协同影响的教育工作者社区。从这一努力中获得的见解将把该项目的影响扩展到网络安全之外，使其他教育领域受益，并培养一个更具网络意识的社会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The global shortage of skilled and diverse cybersecurity workforce is a pressing issue, jeopardizing individual, organizational, and national security. To address this concern, this project aims to attract younger generations to cybersecurity through the development of a gamified education platform. By using Design Science Research (DSR) approach and gamification techniques, the platform seeks to make cybersecurity education more engaging, accessible, and enjoyable. Additionally, it enables educators to design customized educational games, fostering creativity in teaching. The platform’s customizability and extensibility create a collaborative ecosystem to develop, refine, and share content, ensuring its continued effectiveness and broader impact. Ultimately, by making cybersecurity education more welcoming, this project seeks to establish a transformative, game-based pedagogical initiative that inspires and engages a diverse student population, especially underrepresented minorities, to promote inclusion within the field and contribute to a more skilled and diverse workforce.The project utilizes a DSR approach and game-based learning to create an immersive gamified education platform centered around a story-driven educational hacking game. Powered by the Unity game engine, the platform offers a dynamic 3D world map and a storyline that includes quests, progression points, rewards, and thought-provoking ethical decision-making components. The quests are meticulously designed to incorporate fundamental cybersecurity concepts, promoting experiential learning with real-life examples. The platform’s primary objectives encompass three key aspects: (a) enabling the design of customized curricula for fundamental cybersecurity courses through a novel taxonomy of gamification elements and the Community of Inquiry framework, (b) providing educators with a user-friendly platform to create customized quests that seamlessly integrate with existing cybersecurity curricula, fostering creativity and adaptability to diverse teaching styles; and (c) establishing a community of educators engaged in extending and refining the platform, promoting collaboration and fostering synergistic impact. The insights gleaned from this endeavor will extend the project’s impact beyond cybersecurity, benefit other educational domains, and cultivate a more cyber-aware society.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.