Empowering Teachers to Trigger Cybersecurity at School

Since many years, digital tools and e-learning platforms have been considered crucial for distance learning but the widespread spread of the use of technology have raised also several issues regarding cybersecurity aspects. The initial project idea was born during the Covid-19 emergency and at that time the DESI index reported the situation in Europe saying that “39% of EU citizens who used the internet in the last year experienced security-related problems”. Starting from this context, the partners wanted to share their huge professional experience in spreading information and training on cybersecurity, starting from key figures in our society: teachers. Teachers can be the driver of this change, their preparation on cybersecurity can support the creation of safer educational environments and transfer of their knowledge to their students. In order to reach these goals, the partnership worked on a Cybersecurity curriculum in an online format, free to access, to help teachers and students in the development of Cybersecurity skills and competences.

Our objectives were to develop an open e-learning platform on cybersecurity topics, develop digital skills, present innovative methods and tools and cybersecurity competences for teachers and their students. We also wanted to improve the ability of teachers to ensure a safe online environment and prepare them to train their students on cybersecurity. We believe that thanks to the created results, the Cybersecurity curriculum and the online training course, as well as the local dissemination activities, we have reached the above-mentioned objectives.

During the project, we implemented project management and process coordination activities. Once the administrative procedures have been cleared between the coordinator and the national agency, we activated communication channels with the partners, and we implemented virtual meetings for cooperation and organizational activities to ensure administrative duties and tasks and clarify all the aspects about project management. In addition to the online webex meetings, three physical meetings took place in Naple (27-28/09/2022), Rome (23-24/03/2023) and Volos (28-29/09/2023). We followed project results monitoring and budget monitoring to evaluate the activities and other results, measure the effectiveness on students and other quality and evaluation tools. We also followed dissemination activities to bring audience to the project both on internal and external channels. At the end of the project, we organized 4 multiplier events in Italy, Belgium, Greece and Spain to disseminate the final results. Partners started their work focusing on the analysis of the e-learning platforms market and identification of trends and the creation of the Cybersecurity curriculum (R2) of the e-learning (R1). The partners implemented preliminary research activities within their trainers and teacher to understand the requirements a cybersecurity teaching activity needed and then conducted academic research to collect the materials and adapt them to the e-learning modules. Based on the preliminary analysis, we selected the 6 course of the e-learning and inside each course, 10 learning modules and self-assessment quizzes. Consorzio CLARA created the website, hosting the learning platform and then provided the storyboard template to fill-in with the educational learning content to be then transferred into e-learning modules. BIASC, Ferraris, UTH and UMH created the learning content whilst Euphoria was responsible for checking the storyboards and creating H5P quizzes for each module. The course is available in English as it is the most used working language in the IT sectors. More precisely, Ferraris created Course 1, BIASC course 2, UMH course 3 and 4, UTH course 5 and course 5 was jointly produced by BIASC-UMH-UTH. CLARA was in charge of uploading online all the learning materials. The e-learning was reviewed internally by the partners (especially for the content and typos), and then tested locally by the teachers and trainers of the partners during Hackathlons and information events for students and IT trainers. Euphoria delivered to CLARA a last review and update of the quizzes according to the quiz creator staff feedback. The course development phase was supported by all partners during the various revisions thanks to the materials uploaded on the Gdrive during the process.

Within our project, we have created the expected results which are the following: A cybersecurity curriculum to train teachers and school education staff on Cybersecurity-related subjects and support them in including such topics at school (R2). The online course is self-paced and is divided in 6 courses: Course 1: Innovative methods and tools Course 2: Introduction to cybersecurity Course 3: Introduction to Internet of things (IoT) Course 4: Networking essentials Course 5: CyberOps Associate Course 6: Cybersecurity Advanced Inside each course, there are 10 modules and each module has 5 end-of-module quizzes so one course has at least 50 self-assessment quizzes. The users can follow the course freely without a particular order and can go directly to the topic they prefer. The access to the courses is free and it’s possible via a short registration. At the end, users can test their knowledge through final self-assessment quizzes and exercises. The result is available in English. Link to the resource: ERASMUS+: Log in to the site www.ettcs.com