This proposal will develop an educational link between the Yakama Nation and the University of Washington at Bothell to enhance Cybersecurity education for Native students using virtual laboratories. The laboratories will use scenarios to provide hands-on experience in the practical aspects of Cybersecurity. The project will use a new approach to Cybersecurity education that focuses on established success indicators for Native students. The project will focus on an educational design that appeals to the students in areas that are defined as key indicators of academic success. It will enhance students' experiences in these key indicative areas and will develop an architecture and software that can be utilized by other educational organizations to share resources via a virtual laboratory. The expected outcome of this project is a program consisting of two courses that can be taught at any level, but are focused on middle and high school students. These courses will utilize the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes taxonomy developed by John Biggs to approach the material and validate the educational progress of the students. The project will provide a community-building and educational experience that will engage a diverse set of students and teachers focusing on the opportunity for success for student groups that have traditionally poor success rates in higher education. The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program funds proposals that address Cybersecurity from a Trustworthy Computing Systems perspective; a Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences perspective; and proposals focusing entirely on Cybersecurity Education. The project will reach groups of students that have not had success in traditional higher education programs and will help to establish a community between existing students and future students from these groups. The courses and software developed in this project will be able to be reused for other Native student communities that want to establish virtual laboratories, regardless of their particular cultural backgrounds. This proposal will develop a model for Cybersecurity education that can be used to provide high quality and practical education at a low cost to Native students and is designed to encourage them to continue their education pathways.
EDU: Enhancing Cybersecurity Education for Native Students Using Virtual Laboratories