A Hands-On Cybersecurity Curriculum Using a Robotics Platform

Abstract

This paper presents a study where high school students were taught computing and cybersecurity concepts using a robotics platform. 38 students attended a week-long summer camp, starting with projects such as a simulation-only game and a simple autonomous driving program for the robots to learn and apply computational thinking (CT) and networking skills. They were then assigned a series of challenges that required developing progressively more advanced cybersecurity measures to protect their robots. This culminated in a final challenge that required implementing defensive measures such as encryption, secure key exchange, and sequence numbers to prevent cyber attacks during robot operations. We used an evidencecentered design framework to construct rubrics for grading student work. The pre-and post-test results show that the interventions helped students learn cybersecurity and CT concepts, but they had difficulties with networking concepts. These results correlate with scores from the game and the final challenge. Overall, surveys show that the competition-based robotics learning framework was engaging to students, and it supported their learning. However, our intervention needs to be modified to help students learn networking concepts.

Integrated Cybersecurity Plus Robotics Lesson Using NAO

“…The current ACM IT2017 curriculum standards [29], and the IEEE/ACM CSEC2017 curricular guidelines [2] advocate for inclusion of cybersecurity concepts, principles, and fundamentals within all IT programs. With the rising demand for cyber workforce, as we look to better prepare our youth to mend the gap in US cyber workforce, educators are looking to expose youth to a basic awareness and understanding of cybersecurity fundamentals early in college [6,7,9,16,27,28,30,31]. Prior works in enhancing IT and computing education indicate that cybersecurity lesson plans have been adopted by educators to successfully engage college and pre-college students [12,17,18,19,20,21,22,23].…”

“…Our work focuses on investigating the effectiveness of combining cybersecurity and educational robotics (ER) for better engagement of college plus pre-college students, and for enhanced learning. We create an integrated cybersecurity plus ER lesson with NAO, and conduct a learner assessment-based user study with both college and pre-college learners, unlike previous research studies on integrated cybersecurity and robotics education [6,7,16,28,30,31], which have primarily used virtual robotic learning platforms and robotic simulations, instead of an actual humanoid robot. These prior works are predominantly focused on only K-12 learners, unlike our study, which involves both college and high school students.…”

“…[23] developed and evaluated PicoCTF that presented cyber challenges in the form of a web-based capture the flag game, where 2000 K-12 teams participated 12 hours each within the year. Robotic simulation and virtual robotic learning platforms have been deemed an engaging, effective medium for teaching cybersecurity concepts and hacking principles [6,7,16,28,30,31]. ER has been noted to increase students' interest in cybersecurity.…”

“…However, as the need for security is increasing, there has been a shortage of research work in this particular area [3,4,5,8,10,13,14,15]. One research domain, which needs more exploration and further user studies, is the use of robotics in cyber education, particularly, in the knowledge areas of system security, human security, software security, and ethics [2,6,7,9,16,27,28,30,31]. Integrated cybersecurity plus robotics has emerged as a new direction of educational research for innovating and improving cybersecurity plus ER lesson planning mainly at the K-12 level.…”

“…Prior works [6,7,16,28,30,31] have conducted research studies on the efficacy of integrated cybersecurity and robotics education with primarily pre-college students using robotic simulations, virtual robotic platforms, and other visual programming (like block-based coding) driven robotic kits. For instance, a recent publication [28] discusses a learner assessment study on teaching computational thinking along with integrated cybersecurity plus robotics (including autonomous driving capabilities) to high school students using block-based programming with robotic learning platforms. None of these previous works use actual humanoid robots, like NAO, and they also do not include college-level students.…”