Developing An Instructional Operating System For Computer Security Course Laboratories

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

The high priority that information security education warrants has been recognized since the early 1990's. To address these national needs, many universities have incorporated computer and information security courses into their undergraduate and graduate curricula. In these courses, students learn how to design, implement, analyze, test, and operate a system or a network to achieve the security. Pedagogical research has shown that elective laboratory exercises are critically important to the success of this type of courses. However, such elective laboratories do not exist in computer security education. This project fills this gap, namely to develop elective laboratory exercises for computer security courses. We are developing an instructional operating system (SEINIX); each exercise requires students to add a different security mechanism into the system. The instructional system is designed in such a way that makes it easy for students to focus on the part of the system related to the security concepts that we want them to learn. The Center for Support of Teaching and Learning at Syracuse University will help us in evaluating the electiveness of our approach.