2nd Annual Virginia Cybersecurity Education Conference

The Vinod Chachra IMPACT Lab at Radford University (www.radford.edu/impact) is delivering online, self-paced, competency-based education (CBE) in cybersecurity throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Cybersecurity Certificate program enables working adults to learn online, at their own pace, to master critical cybersecurity workplace competencies that map to industry standards. In this presentation, we will discuss research-based practices from cognitive science, analytics, simulation-based learning and gamification, which are incorporated into the training to ensure it is challenging, highly effective and engaging. We will also discuss challenges, which include keeping students progressing in a self-paced environment and providing hands-on experiences in hard to teach areas such as penetration testing. In this presentation, participants will also learn how the IMPACT team uses a modular and iterative development process to continuously improve the engagement and efficacy of the training with a focus on micro-credentials and learning science alignment.