The Building of Teams During an IT Competition: Success with Combining Multiple Schools into Teams to Perform Collaborative Challenges During a Two‐Day Competition. Faculty of post‐secondary ...education in any science, mathematics, engineering and technology (STEM) discipline recognize that nationally enrollments in science and technology are declining. Being part of an Electrical and Computer Engineering department at a land grant institution, we are most specifically focused on the STEM topic of information technology (IT) and concerned with the downturn in the number of graduates to fill professional IT positions. The IT‐Adventures program, now in its fourth year, is an Iowa‐based, statewide initiative dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of IT among high school students. The underlying tenet of the program is through increasing understanding of and excitement for IT at the high school level, we can increase the number of students enrolling in IT‐related programs at post‐secondary institutions and increase the number of graduates who will fill future IT needs. A secondary and arguably as worthy goal is to make the whole experience fun. IT‐Adventures is a year‐long inquiry‐based learning program for the high school students in three areas: cyber defense, game design and robotics. The capstone event for students who participate in the year‐long IT‐Adventures program is a two‐day competition. Students showcase the IT knowledge they gained during the past year of work by exhibiting a primary challenge solution they have worked on prior to the event, undertaking real‐time challenges that are introduced during the competition and making presentations about their clubs’ IT‐related community service projects. This paper focuses on the type of real‐time challenges provided to the teams competing in the two‐day event. In a majority of the competitions available for students, both high school and post‐secondary, the unit of competition is team that is based upon students from a single institution participating in the event. However, in two of the three learning areas (game design and robotics), we have found that collaborative real‐time challenges where teams from different schools are required work to share resources and collaborate on design challenges are very successful. We have had a very positive response to these kinds of collaborative challenges from the participants, as well as the teachers and mentors for the high schools. The paper will provide a background of how to create and judge collaborative projects, as well as data supporting the effectiveness of the IT‐Adventures program and the two‐day competition to increase enrollments in IT‐related areas. With only two years of enrollment data available (the Fall 2010 enrollments are not available at the time of this abstract submission due date), of the students who have participated in our program in the past two years, 68 students out of 220 seniors have enrolled at Iowa State University in an IT‐related area. We do not have data on how many participants enrolled at sister institutions or community colleges in our state.
Using Content Analysis to Evaluate Student Inquiry-Based Learning:The Case of High School Students Preparing for a Cyber Defense CompetitionAlthough it has been demonstrated that inquiry-based ...learning is a successful method to increasestudent understanding in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas, aswell as facilitate critical thinking, there have been few studies investigating the interactions anddiscussions among students participating in group inquiry-based learning projects. We believethat by evaluating the chat logs from a high school cyber defense competition (CDC) we can addto our understanding of student learning, interests in computer engineering, and motivations forstudying security, networking and information assurance.The high school students who participated in the CDC were part of an information technology(IT) club formed in the fall of the academic year to study network and information security usingan inquiry-based approach. Students spent the year using the learning materials provided by alarge Midwestern university, asking their own questions about network security and informationassurance, exploring additional resources and determining how to solve the challenges presentedto them. The capstone event for students who participated in the IT club is a day-long CDC,where students remotely design, configure and maintain a set of servers and a network in asecure manner one month prior to the competition.This paper utilizes content analysis where the chat conversations of students are quantitativelyanalyzed for overarching themes and questions. The paper examines the logs from the 2007 highschool cyber defense competition and categorizes the conversations as to content, as well as tothe topic change over time. As the deadline draws near to the competition, the conversationthemes change to reflect what the students are most interested in at that point in the setupprocess. Since college students in Computer Engineering provide technical support for themonth remote setup leading up to the CDC, there is learning both between teams of studentsfrom different high schools, and among college and high school students. The study shows theinteractions in an online community of high school and college students who don’t know eachother, but are working toward their goal of configuring a secure, fully functional network.While coding of content analysis relies heavily upon manual coding which is time consuming, itprovides a richness of understanding of student learning and interactions in inquiry-basedlearning that other methods do not cover. While we have five years of chat log data, this paper isan evaluation of the first year of chat logs and constructs the framework and methodology forutilizing content analysis to understand student learning and motivations in inquiry-basedlearning programs. We believe that building this framework allows us, and others, to extend it tothe examination of other types of logs where students are communicating to each other bothsocially and about their coursework and projects. Course management software, as well as socialmedia, has similar log files and, with the appropriate permissions, evaluations of these messagescould also provide a valuable look into what students are thinking and discussing while they arelearning.
Information Assurance Student Group: How to Turn a Club into a ValuableLearning Experience for StudentsThe Information Assurance Student Group (IASG) in the Department of Electrical and ...ComputerEngineering at (name omitted) was started in 2005 as a retention and engagement effort forstudents who were interested in network and information security. However, it quickly grew intoa wholly student run organization that not only focuses on educating its own members, but alsoruns cyber defense competitions, works with corporate sponsors and recruiters, performs securityproduct testing for vendors and provides K-12 outreach programming for the university. IASGprovides weekly active, inquiry-based learning meetings for its membership which focus on thedevelopment of applied and practical security skills. IASG has not only increased the interest ofComputer Engineering students in security, but also opened the door for students in Managementand Information Sciences and Computer Science to gain hands-on experience and life skills.IASG was started by a core group of undergraduate students in Computer Engineering who wereinterested in security issues. In our curriculum at (name omitted) security is primarily a graduatetopic with M.S. and Ph.D.s focused on security being conferred. However, at the undergraduatelevel, especially the first years of foundation building in the engineering curriculum, students’interests in security are not nurtured. The club was one answer to keeping students who wantcareers in security engaged during their undergraduate career.IASG currently has a membership of over 130 students who attend twice weekly meetings whereseniors and graduate students take turns delivering content. The first meeting of the week coversadvanced topics that involve a level of understanding in security. The second meeting is forinexperienced students to focus on building block concepts in security. All meetings are acombination of lecture, demonstration, discussion and hands-on activities.IASG is also responsible for organizing and running four cyber defense competitions (CDCs) peryear for students; one each for (state omitted) high school, (state omitted) community college(two-year), (name omitted) students and four-year students from universities across the nation.In a CDC students design, configure and maintain a set of servers and a network in a securemanner prior to the competition. Then during the day long competition they work to preventsecurity breaches and to remediate any exploits that occur while maintaining a fully functionalnetwork for their end users. Support for remote setup is provided by members of IASG for themonth leading up to the competition. This is a beneficial exercise for IASG students incommunication, terminology, network design and implementation.The proposed paper will outline our experiences in best practices for retention of undergraduateComputer Engineering students, as well as the novel teaching practices that the students use intheir inquiry-based learning focused on participating in the CDCs. The paper will also addressthe faculty role in facilitating inquiry-based clubs for computer engineering students anddemonstrate how this scales from faculty directed clubs to faculty empowered student learning.It will also detail the corporate involvement necessary to fund club activities and the K-12outreach performed by club members.
