Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Cybersecurity (MS)
Administrative Home Department
Department of Computer Science
Advisor 1
Yu Cai
Committee Member 1
Jean Mayo
Committee Member 2
Xiaoyong Yuan
Abstract
Cybersecurity and programming are becoming more and more prominent in today’s world. It is beneficial to begin teaching these topics to students at a younger age. Additionally, we see students in primary and secondary schools struggling to maintain focus in class as attention spans shrink. This paper looks at different drone models to see if any of them could be sufficient solutions to be implemented into primary and secondary schools to teach cybersecurity and programming topics to students. Besides teaching capabilities, drones must also be affordable for institutions and simple enough to construct, configure, and operate so that a teacher with little knowledge could implement the drone if needed. The drone models looked at are a custom-built Raspberry Pi Pixhawk Quadcopter from Drone Dojo, Dexter Industries’ GoPiGo, and DJI’s Mavic Air 2. Additionally, we look at different teaching methods and activities that can be implemented into a curriculum outside of drone use. Curriculum was created for different programming and cybersecurity courses and tested during the 2022 GenCyber summer camp hosted by Michigan Technological University. This curriculum gives us an insight into teaching middle and high school students cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and Python coding. The thesis of this paper is that the GoPiGo is an effective medium for teaching programming in primary and secondary schools, and that hands-on activities are successful in reinforcing taught topics while keeping students engaged.
Recommended Citation
Youngstrom, Andrew R., "EXPLORING DIFFERENT MEDIUMS FOR TEACHING PROGRAMMING AND CYBERSECURITY IN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS", Open Access Master's Thesis, Michigan Technological University, 2023.