Volume 5
Volume 5, Number 11 |
May 18, 2007 |
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Belle S. Woodward
Travis Young
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Abstract: Information technology’s integration into the world has afforded cyber criminals the opportunity to exploit societal entities on an epic scale. The ability to mitigate these attacks becomes a must if current and future professionals intend to survive in a tightening job market. In order to meet this ever-increasing need for protection, educational institutions are pressed to develop a new age of cyber security specialists. Information security curriculum development continues to be challenged today to support a dynamically changing workplace. Information security’s rise in importance following the burst of the Internet bubble in 2000 has called for some unique ways to prepare undergraduate students for the workplace. The requirements for more “hands on” experience for students at the university level, along with information security’s status as having the greatest job-growth potential over the next three to five years. This has required the researchers to significantly reduce lecture based course content and increase “hands on” instruction through the principles of active learning. This paper details changes to an information security program at a midwestern university. Beginning with the theories of Kolb, the researchers combined traditional pedagogy and modern business trends to shift from one course in network security and two courses in networking to a more comprehensive program of three classes in network security and three classes in networking. Students exposed to this new course curriculum validated the relevance of these changes, ultimately receiving a first place win against seven other educational institutions in the 2006 Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.
Keywords: curriculum development, pedagogy, information security
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Recommended Citation: Woodward and Young (2007). Redesigning an Information System Security Curriculum through Application of Traditional Pedagogy and Modern Business Trends. Information Systems Education Journal, 5 (11). http://isedj.org/5/11/. ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2006: §2332. ISSN: 1542-7382.)