About the CyberEdge Projects

Gamification

Gamification is the application of elements of gaming design and game mechanics in a non-game context. Game players regularly exhibit risk-taking, strategising and problem solving; behaviours that are ideally required in a cyber security professional.

Gamification mechanics and game design techniques engage and motivate people to achieve their goals, encourage participation and usage.

Gamification design principles include:

• Relatedness: creating personal goals, creating communities of interest, guiding the user through a meaningful story, creating social context meaning
• Competence: an achievement flow, interesting challenges, clear design and goals, feedback, awareness of unintended behaviour
• Autonomy: voluntary play, being aware of losing autonomy and devaluing the activity by avoiding over-justification.

Intended impacts of using gamification in CyberGaTE

• Better learning experience: The learner can experience fun during the game and still learn if the level of engagement is high. A good gamification strategy with high levels of engagement will lead to an increase in recall and retention.
• Better learning environment: Gamification provides an effective, informal learning environment, and helps learners practice real life situations and challenges in a safe environment. This leads to a more engaged learning experience that facilitates better knowledge retention.
• Higher recall / retention of information
• A catalyst for behavioural changes

Problem Based Learning

What is problem based learning (PBL)?

• PBL is an approach to learning characterised by the following:Students receive a scenario, which describes the context of a situation, including a problem. The problem is meant to reflect a situation that could occur in the real world, so it is ill-defined, contains superfluous (or sometimes insufficient/ incorrect) information. It therefore promotes students to analyse the problem and identify what is important.
• A key aspect of PBL is that students don’t have the knowledge to solve it at the time. They are required to identify what they need to learn to solve the problem. The tutor is a facilitator to ensure they don’t go too far off track.
• Once students have identified a list of aspects they need to learn (their learning goals) they independently research those areas.
• Finally they share what they have learned and apply it to manage/ solve the problem. Often they work in teams to do this work.

Resources needed to support this form of learning comprise:

• The problem scenario, comprising background and the problem to be solved.
• A list of learning objectives that the scenario is intended to help students achieve.
• A list of resources students could use to learn the material.
• A facilitator guide that identifies potential solutions.

Classroom-as-a-service

The GaTE will be made available to other HEIs, industries and students over the internet, and reside in the newly created Red Rose Cloud. The virtualized training environment is built on the principles of classroom as a service technology, hosting carefully designed gamified problem-based learning resources.

Classroom-as-a-service is akin to the concept of software-as-a-service, whereby immersive learning content is hosted on a cloud based service.

Partner colleges, SMEs, larger industries and HEIs will be able to use GaTE as a cyber-security practice ground for students and staff.