The project proposal responds to today’s serious threats, especially the risks associated with electronic attacks, which a significant part of the society is still unable to recognize and adequately prevent.
As part of the project, we therefore intend to raise the awareness of target groups about electronic attacks and the basic methods of defence against them in various ways.
In the countries of the consortium (as well as in the rest of Europe) the real needs that the project responds to are defined by the current security challenges and by the corresponding national priorities. (For example, within the Czech Republic it reacts to the updating of the framework educational programs of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports for secondary vocational schools in the field of cybersecurity and its inclusion in teaching.)
Target groups
The project is focused on three target groups:
- students of technically oriented vocational schools,
- teachers of technically oriented vocational schools,
- students of universities.
Results
As part of the project, two groups of key results will be developed: educational materials and a cybersecurity portal. The results will be freely accessible, even after the project is completed.
Educational materials
There will be developed a set of 10 practically oriented online laboratory tasks dealing with the topic of cybersecurity. Individual tasks will be accompanied by a description of the relevant issues. Laboratory tasks will be prepared in a virtual environment with the aim of demonstrating a security problem and possible ways of solving it. Thematically, the tasks will be focused primarily on ordinary users of the cyberspace.
In addition to the laboratory tasks, modern theoretical materials explaining the given problems in more detail will be developed at the same time. The materials will be available in English and in all the languages of the project consortium countries. They will include texts, images, videos, tests and interactive elements.
These materials will be available through the learning portal TechPedia, which has been operated by the project coordinator for a long time and is already well-known in the community of technical vocational schools.
We assume that practical laboratory tasks and teaching materials will be a suitable supplement for teaching cybersecurity in schools with an emphasis on the illustrative nature of the interpretation, introducing the given issues in a real environment.
Cybersecurity portal
We will develop and launch a new portal that will include, among other information, categorized links to learning objects for the field of cybersecurity. This portal will appropriately expand the capabilities of the TechPedia portal as well as the usability of a set of new online lab tasks.
Training activities and events
An important part of the project is the verification of the developed tools and their use in practice. Therefore, we will prepare and implement four activities that will be available in all countries of the project consortium:
- We will organize a series of three information workshops for the target group, in which we will draw attention to emerging project outputs and the possibilities of their use.
- We will organize basic training in cybersecurity for vocational school teachers with an emphasis on how this issue should be explained to students. We will also teach the teachers to effectively use online laboratory tasks.
- We will prepare a pilot testing for vocational school students, in the framework of which they will use both online laboratory tasks and the new learning materials with their teachers.
- We will prepare several teaching blocks for university students, which will be focused mainly on more advanced tasks in cybersecurity. Here we will also use the developed learning materials and online laboratory tasks.
Evaluation, promotions, dissemination
All key results will be evaluated by independent experts (international board) to achieve the highest quality. The results will be continuously advertised and promoted to the relevant target audiences in the partner countries as well as abroad, using all suitable channels and means.
Project consortium
The project consortium consists of five members; it includes teams from three technical universities and two technical vocational schools based in three European countries:
- České vysoké učení technické v Praze (CZ),
- Slovenská technická univerzita v Bratislave (SK),
- Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (ES),
- Vyšší odborná škola informačních studií a Střední škola elektrotechniky, multimédií a informatiky (CZ),
- Stredná odborná škola informačných technológií (SK).
The partner teams are composed in such a way that cybersecurity experts, pedagogy and didactics specialists, programmers and educational application developers are represented in them. There will also be people who have very good contacts with the target groups in order to reach them effectively and thus maximize the impact of the developed outputs and planned events.
The future
After the conclusion of the project, we intend to expand the portfolio with other online tasks, including the involvement of the wider public in these educational activities. We will continue to operate the new cybersecurity portal and expand it as possible.