This dissertation introduces a comprehensive framework aimed at reshaping applied cybersecurity education to significantly ease the learning curve, at scale, through three synergistic innovations. These methods address the daunting educational barriers in cybersecurity, enabling learners at all levels to understand complex security concepts more…

In MOOCs for programming, Automated Testing and Feedback (ATF) systems are frequently integrated, providing learners with immediate feedback on code assignments. The analysis of the large amounts of trace data collected by these systems may provide insights into learners' patterns of utilizing the automated feedback, which is crucial for the…

This paper presents the first experiences of the use of an online open-source repository with programming exercises. The repository is independent of any specific teaching approach. Students can search for and select an exercise that trains the programming concepts that they want to train and that only uses the programming concepts they already…

An introductory survey course in software engineering is now required at many accredited undergraduate institutions in the United States. The usual presentation of material consists of student projects that showcase design, development, and testing methodologies. While this approach does provide a foundation, students are left without professional…

Given the rapid rise of open educational resources (OER) for informal learning pursuits impacting countless millions of people each day around the world, this study investigated the impact of the initiative that spearheaded this movement; namely, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) open courseware (OCW). More specifically, it explored…

Background and Context: GitHub has been recently used in Software Engineering (SE) classes to facilitate collaboration in student team projects as well as help teachers to evaluate the contributions of their students more objectively. Objective: We explore the benefits and drawbacks of using GitHub as a means for team collaboration and performance…

Data science and informatics tools are developing at a blistering rate, but their users often lack the educational background or resources to efficiently apply the methods to their research. Training resources and vignettes that accompany these tools often deprecate because their maintenance is not prioritized by funding, giving teams little time…

The advance of digital technology presents an opportunity to equip students with relevant skill sets as "Scientists of the Future" who are able to utilize knowledge at the interface between various disciplines. In this technology report, an open source programming language is used to automate a simple laboratory experiment commonly…

With the rapid adoption of internet-connected and driver-assist technologies, and the spread of semiautonomous to self-driving cars on roads worldwide, cybersecurity for smart cars is a timely concern and one worth exploring both in the classroom and in the real world. Highly publicized hacks against production cars, and a relatively small number…

Contribution: There exist software tools designed for professional or research purposes that may serve for grounding the learning of real-time scheduling within introductory courses. This article contributes with a hardware and software infrastructure aimed at improving the learning process of the essentials of real-time scheduling in…

Consumer electronics are creating huge job markets for graduates with the programming back-ground, and more and more computer science departments are launching embedded software subjects to meet this demand. However, most students majoring computer science do not have the background in electronics, or even circuits. Due to this reason, how to…

This study aims to explore an educational learning environment that supports students to learn conceptual modelling with the unified modelling language (UML). In this study, we call the describing models "UML programming." In this paper, we show an educational UML programming environment for science, technology, engineering, art, and…

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts over 8 million job openings in IT and computing, including 1 million cybersecurity postings, over the current five-year period. This paper presents lessons learned in preparing middle-school students in rural Georgia for future careers in computer science/ IT by teaching computer programming in the free,…

This paper documents four years of a novel approach to teaching a two-course sequence in software engineering as part of the ABET-accredited computer science curriculum at the College of Charleston. This approach is team-based and centers on learning software engineering in the context of open source software projects. In the first course, teams…

Programming concepts are important and challenging to novices who are beginning to study computer programming skills. In addition to the textbook content, students usually learn the concepts of programming from the web; however, it could be difficult for novice learners to effectively derive helpful information from such non-structured open…