Evaluation of Peer Instruction for Cybersecurity Education

Abstract

Peer instruction pedagogy is a student-centric approach that encourages students to read lecture material before coming to class and engages them in class via group discussion and preplanned conceptual questions. Peer instruction has shown promising results in core computer science courses such as Theory of Computation and Computer Architecture, as well as reducing failure rates and improving student retention in computer science major. This paper presents the results of the first-ever attempt to replicate these results in a cybersecurity course, using an action research methodology to implement and evaluate peer instruction in a semester-long cybersecurity course, Introduction to Computer Security. The evaluation consists of quizzes, subjective exams, peer instruction questions, and attitudinal surveys gathered over two control semesters and one peer instruction condition semester. We find evidence of learning gains during group discussion and improvements in dropout and failure rates compared to traditional lecture classes. In attitudinal surveys, most students report that they would recommend that other instructors use peer instruction.