Developing Computational Adversarial Thinking: Bridging Technical Skills Training and Academic Coursework

The national shortage of software developers who lack basic cybersecurity skills is well-documented. This shortage is a result of a divergence between career technical education and traditional academic degree paths. On the one hand, many IT professionals understand the technical aspects of cybersecurity, from installing firewalls to forensics, but require additional software development skills. On the other hand, computer scientists/developers (i.e., those who have pursued standard academic training) understand software development but lack adversarial thinking (AT) skills. The goal of this project is to increase cyber awareness by helping students to develop AT skills. This project will investigate the impact of using AT in introductory computing courses for computer science and non-computer science majors. By infusing AT education in computing programs at the community and technical college level, this project will enhance the first two years of education in computing and increase the number of qualified software developers in the borderland of El Paso, Texas. This project will address the minimal emphasis on AT knowledge and skills in the fundamentals of computer science courses by infusing AT and analytics within the curriculum and developing extracurricular activities to provide community practice through experiential learning. New initiatives include the development of a computer science course for non-majors that will introduce AT in a multidisciplinary environment; the infusion of AT modules in the fundamentals of computer science courses; professional development opportunities for students, instructional assistants, and professionals to learn about AT concepts in computing; and the development of student competitions (also known as Hackathons). This project will provide novel pedagogical teaching based on AT and analytics as an extension of computational thinking. Best practices and content material will be shared in a public repository, accessible to educators worldwide. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy. 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.