You hacked my program? Teaching cybersecurity using game-based learning
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Date
2024
Authors
Tareque, Md. Hasan
Deutekom, Steven
Anvik, John
Bashir, Maimoona
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ACM
Abstract
As cyberthreats become more commonplace, the teaching of cyber-
security concepts at an introductory level is becoming increasingly
important. However, teaching this subject in an engaging manner is
challenging. This work investigates the use of a game-based learn-
ing approach to teaching cybersecurity concepts in the form of a
card game called Program Wars. Within the game, players use cards
to create a representation of a computer program while launching
cyberattacks at their opponents and defending their own program.
As the initial version of the game presented cybersecurity concepts
at only a high-level, Program Wars v.2.0 was created to introduce
players to eight common cyberattacks and the tools used to defend
against them. The results of a user study show that after playing
Program Wars v.2.0 a player’s knowledge of cybersecurity concepts
is improved, showing that our game-based learning approach pro-
vides an effective means for introducing cybersecurity concepts to
those with little or no prior knowledge. As Program Wars is a freely
available web-based game, it can easily be integrated into classes
to improve a student’s knowledge of cybersecurity concepts.
Description
Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license applies
Keywords
Cybersecurity education , Game-based learning , Web application , Cyberthreats , Cyberattacks
Citation
Tareque, M. H., Deutekom, S., Anvik, J., & Bashir, M. (2024, May 2-3). You hacked my program? Teaching cybersecurity using game-based learning. 26th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education, Kelowna, B.C., Canada. https://doi.org/10.1145/3660650.3660672