Biblio

This Innovate Practice full paper presents a cloud-based personalized learning lab platform. Personalized learning is gaining popularity in online computer science education due to its characteristics of pacing the learning progress and adapting the instructional approach to each individual learner from a diverse background. Among various instructional methods in computer science education, hands-on labs have unique requirements of understanding learner's behavior and assessing learner's performance for personalization. However, it is rarely addressed in existing research. In this paper, we propose a personalized learning platform called ThoTh Lab specifically designed for computer science hands-on labs in a cloud environment. ThoTh Lab can identify the learning style from student activities and adapt learning material accordingly. With the awareness of student learning styles, instructors are able to use techniques more suitable for the specific student, and hence, improve the speed and quality of the learning process. With that in mind, ThoTh Lab also provides student performance prediction, which allows the instructors to change the learning progress and take other measurements to help the students timely. For example, instructors may provide more detailed instructions to help slow starters, while assigning more challenging labs to those quick learners in the same class. To evaluate ThoTh Lab, we conducted an experiment and collected data from an upper-division cybersecurity class for undergraduate students at Arizona State University in the US. The results show that ThoTh Lab can identify learning style with reasonable accuracy. By leveraging the personalized lab platform for a senior level cybersecurity course, our lab-use study also shows that the presented solution improves students engagement with better understanding of lab assignments, spending more effort on hands-on projects, and thus greatly enhancing learning outcomes.

Cybersecurity education and training have gained increasing attention in all sectors due to the prevalence and quick evolution of cyberattacks. A variety of platforms and systems have been proposed and developed to accommodate the growing needs of hands-on cybersecurity practice. However, those systems are either lacking sufficient flexibility (e.g., tied to a specific virtual computing service provider, little customization support) or difficult to scale. In this work, we present a cloud-based platform named EZSetup for hands-on cybersecurity practice at scale and our experience of using it in class. EZSetup is customizable and cloud-agnostic. Users can create labs through an intuitive Web interface and deploy them onto one or multiple clouds. We have used NSF funded Chameleon cloud and our private OpenStack cloud to develop, test and deploy EZSetup. We have developed 14 network and security labs using the tool and included six labs in an undergraduate network security course in spring 2019. Our survey results show that students have very positive feedback on using EZSetup and computing clouds for hands-on cybersecurity practice.

Encryption is critical in protecting the confidentiality of users' data on mobile devices. However, research has shown that many mobile apps are not correctly using the ciphers, which makes them vulnerable to the attacks. The existing resources on cipher programming education do not provide enough practical scenarios to help students learn the cipher programming in the context of real world situations with programs that have complex interacting modules with access to networking, storage, and database. This poster introduces a course module that teaches students how to develop secure Android applications by correctly using Android's cryptography APIs. This course module is targeted to two areas where programmers commonly make many mistakes: password based encryption and SSL certificate validation. The core of the module includes a real world sample Android program for students to secure by implementing cryptographic components correctly. The course module will use open-ended problem solving to let students freely explore the multiple options in securing the application. The course module includes a lecture slide on Android's Crypto library, its common misuses, and suggested good practices. Assessment materials will also be included in the course module. This course module will be used and evaluated in a Network Security class. We will present the results of the evaluation in the conference.