Design recommendations for online cybersecurity courses

• Published in: Computers & security Vol. 80; pp. 238 - 256
• Main Authors: González-Manzano, Lorena, de Fuentes, Jose M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Ltd 01-01-2019; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: CAI; Computer assisted instruction; Cybersecurity; Cybersecurity course guidance; Cybersecurity distance education and telelearning; Cybersecurity teaching/learning strategies; Design; Distance learning; Media in cybersecurity education; NICE framework; Online instruction; Studies; Technology education; Training; Media in cybersecurity education; Cybersecurity teaching/learning strategies; NICE framework; Cybersecurity distance education and telelearning; Cybersecurity course guidance
• ISSN: 0167-4048; 1872-6208
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2018.09.009

Nowadays, a significant amount of free online cybersecurity training courses are offered. When preparing further courses, the designer has to decide what to teach and how to do it. In this paper, we provide with a set of recommendations for both issues. Concerning topic selection, 35 free online courses are analysed using NIST’s NICE reference framework. Thus, several training gaps are discovered. Concerning the way of preparing the course (or refining it after the first edition), a set of good practices is proposed based on students’ performance and commitment in a cybersecurity MOOC with +2,000 initially active students. To foster further research in this area, an open-source framework is released to enable the analysis of students’ performance in EdX MOOCs.