ISCAP Proceedings: Abstract Presentation
The Cyber Roadshow: Lessons from a Year of K-12 Cybersecurity Hands-On Events
Cody Welu
Dakota State University
Abstract
Expanding the cybersecurity workforce requires engaging students before they reach college, yet opportunities for cybersecurity education remain limited in many rural South Dakota school districts. To help meet this gap, Dakota State University has formalized and expanded its K-12 cyber outreach programming through the Governors Cyber Academy (GCA). One arm of GCA’s outreach are Cyber Roadshows – events in which college faculty and students visit school districts across the state. This abstract reports on the past year of these university-led outreach events that used hands-on activities in computer science, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence to introduce students to core concepts, raise career awareness, and foster early interest in the field.
Over the course of the year, we held nearly 30 events off campus across the state of South Dakota. Most events were our flagship Cyber Roadshow events that delivered interactive, low-barrier, age-appropriate activities with connections to real-world computer science and cybersecurity practices delivered by college faculty and students. Other events used a single hands-on activity with a focus on careers in the industry, our “Careers Chat” sessions. Activities emphasized experiential active learning and explored topics such as password security and authentication, electronics engineering and soldering, cryptography and steganography, and programming, web design, and logic. Sessions were selected and modified to fit the age groups and varying levels of experience, with adjustments being made on the fly in response to real-time learner interactions and feedback.
One representative session used BBC micro:bit devices to teach programming and networking concepts. One micro:bit was used to operate a robot, where learners used functions and conditional logic to determine movement of the robot. A second micro:bit was added to act as a remote controller to illustrate wireless networking and communication. These concepts provide a good introduction to underlying concepts of secure systems and IoT environments.
Events varied in structure: some allowed high school students to self-select attendance, while others required participation by an entire grade or school as part of their regular school day. An unexpected observation was that students in the required-attendance settings generally demonstrated higher engagement and more respectful behavior than students who had voluntarily chosen to attend. This finding raises questions about motivation, group dynamics, and the design of outreach experiences that can effectively reach a broader and more diverse set of learners rather than just those already predisposed to the field. Other observations and participant feedback show that well-designed hands-on experiences, including completely unplugged experiences, can generate interest in cybersecurity.
This work contributes practical insights for cybersecurity education outreach in a rural setting. Beyond individual events, sustained outreach can create relationships with secondary schools that support long term cybersecurity pathway development through continued outreach, dual credit coursework, and other academic partnerships.