CyberGuard: a gamified cybersecurity education app for Key Stage 3 students

Thayarathan, Kagethan and Wilde, Adriana Gabriela (2024) CyberGuard: a gamified cybersecurity education app for Key Stage 3 students. ALT Annual Conference 2024, , Manchester, United Kingdom. 03 - 05 Sep 2024. p. 1 .

Abstract

With an increase in the number and complexity of cyber-crimes, it is important that everybody is aware of basic preventative measures to avoid becoming a victim to them. To address this, the proposed solution involves developing a serious game tailored to Key Stage 3 students, aiming to educate and assess their knowledge. For this project, we reviewed existing solutions and the effectiveness of game-based teaching, revealing a lack of existing solutions for secondary school students. Subsequently, a 2D RPG game with 3 different challenges was devised in Unity, with each challenge addressing a specific aspect of cyber-security: malware, password security, and phishing emails. User testing in the form of an anonymous questionnaire was carried out and distributed through social media, in which 16 participants responded to. The reviews of the games were generally positive, indicating that the game was both engaging and effectively conveyed cyber-security concepts to participants with varying levels of knowledge. Despite needing more refinements to make the game more visually appealing for Key Stage 3 students, it provides a solid foundation to build upon, and has to the potential to be supplemented to the school curricula and offer students an engaging and effective means to learn about cyber-security. In this session, a demo of CyberGuard will be made, and participants will be given the opportunity to provide feedback to complement the evaluation of the app.

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Contributors

Author: Adriana Gabriela Wilde

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