The University of Toledo has a chance to lead the nation in developing a cybersecurity curriculum for high schools across the country.
It has received a $267,700 National Science Foundation grant to research, along with Purdue University Northwest, how to teach high school students about cybersecurity and about the risks and threats from smart phones, tablets, and other technology. The idea is to create a curriculum that high schools can use.
A key part of the research will be a two-week summer camp for each of the next three years, in which 20 to 30 different high school students each year will be used as test subjects in developing the curriculum.
UT project leader Ahmad Javaid, an assistant professor in the university’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, says that among the biggest risks to high school students are cyber-bullying and cat phishing, the latter of which someone creates a fake online profile to seduce a victim into a relationship, often to obtain money or sex.
The camp will allow the researchers to test interactive, animated programs on the students, and see what works and what doesn’t in identifying threats as well as in developing defense and prevention mechanisms, some tools they can employ for the rest of their lives. A diversity of students in gender, race, and socioeconomic status will be part of the selection process of local students interested in participating, Mr. Javaid says.
Purdue University Northwest received a $230,000 NSF grant and will also have summer camps in the next three years to do it own testing on students in Hammond, Ind. The two universities’ researchers will collaborate.
The grants will help pay the researchers as well as the materials needed for the camps.
The research is geared toward high school students because they tend to have more access to smart phones and to be more independent in their Internet uses than do middle school students, who could be the focus of subsequent research.
Mr. Javaid says that high school teachers have daily curriculum demands that are pretty full, so a separate cybersecurity class probably won’t work, but finding ways to weave the cybersecurity components into existing classes is a goal.
If the project is successful, the results from UT in three years could be employed at schools across the nation.
First Published November 17, 2019, 5:00 a.m.
