Role-playing and visual interfaces are vital in computer science education, notably cybersecurity, where a concrete understanding of defensive and offensive strategies matters. In this work, we implemented a cryptography education tool combining real-world scenarios, role-playing and visual interfaces to simplify cryptography education for K-12 students. This tool covers symmetric and asymmetric cryptography and secure hashing algorithms, which are fundamental to principles like confidentiality, integrity protection, and authentication. Our tool's core idea is to simulate a cryptographic transaction between a user and a bank while an attacker tries to compromise the communication. Within this role-playing and visual environment, students step into the roles of both the user and the bank, using an intuitive visual interface to perform essential cryptographic operations and grasp the underlying concepts. We evaluated our educational tool on 58 students (41 middle and 17 high school students), measuring comprehension via a survey. Our analysis revealed that middle and high school students could readily understand the key operations related to symmetric cryptography, asymmetric cryptography, and hashing using our role-playing tool. Nearly all participants expressed satisfaction with the tool and were willing to recommend it to others.

This paper describes the design and evaluation of DSAScratch, an extension to Scratch, a widely used block-based programming language. The DSAScratch framework implements advanced data structures such as arrays, sets, dictionaries, and searching and sorting algorithms. By presenting these concepts in an intuitive block-based interface, these blocks abstract away technical details and simplify data structures and algorithms concepts for K-12 students to grasp and apply to programming problems more readily. A preliminary evaluation of the tools' usability and learning outcomes is presented in this paper. Given the information we have gathered about DSAScratch, we show that the extension is beneficial for students to develop a deeper understanding of programming and an intuitive understanding of these concepts in high school. We present the methodology and preliminary results of a user study conducted with ten high school students. During the user study, 70% of the participants understood the key ideas behind DSAScratch implemented data structures and algorithms through a mixture of lectures and hands-on activities. We show that DSAScratch was also an important part of the workshop for 90% of the students who participated, as it enhanced their understanding of algorithms and data structures. Furthermore, they indicated that they would recommend DSAScratch to their peers.

We have designed and developed a simple, visual, and narrative K-12 cybersecurity curriculum leveraging the Scratch programming platform to demonstrate and teach fundamental cybersecurity concepts such as confidentiality, integrity protection, and authentication. The visual curriculum simulates a real-world scenario of a user and a bank performing a bank transaction and an adversary attempting to attack the transaction. We have designed six visual scenarios, the curriculum first introduces students to three visual scenarios demonstrating attacks that exist when systems do not integrate concepts such as confidentiality, integrity protection, and authentication. Then, it introduces them to three visual scenarios that build on the attacks to demonstrate and teach how these fundamental concepts can be used to defend against them. We conducted an evaluation of our curriculum through a study with 18 middle and high school students. To evaluate the student's comprehension of these concepts we distributed a technical survey, where overall average of students answering these questions related to the demonstrated concepts is 9.28 out of 10. Furthermore, the survey results revealed that 66.7% found the system extremely easy and the remaining 27.8% found it easy to use and understand.

We have designed and developed a simple, visual, and narrative K-12 cybersecurity curriculum leveraging the Scratch programming platform to demonstrate and teach fundamental cybersecurity concepts such as confidentiality, integrity protection, and authentication. The visual curriculum simulates a real-world scenario of a user and a bank performing a banking transaction and an adversary attempting to attack the transaction. The curriculum first introduces students to three visual scenarios demonstrating attacks that exist when systems do not integrate the fundamental concepts of confidentiality, integrity protection, and authentication. Then, it introduces them to three visual scenarios that build on the attacks to demonstrate and teach how the fundamental concepts can be used to defend against them.

Cybersecurity awareness plays an important role in the human arena of cybersecurity. Using a nationally representative South Korean sample, this current study examines two pathways leading to enhanced cybersecurity protection behaviors in relation to cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity risks. In addition, this study aims to identify generational differences between pathways. Data were derived from Information Security Survey, which is the latest public access survey on this topic. The study found that cybersecurity awareness and cybersecurity risk have a positive association with cybersecurity behaviors. In a multigroup analysis, the influence of cybersecurity risk on cybersecurity behaviors was statistically significant for all generational groups. Across the younger generation, acceptance of cybersecurity risk was more influenced by cybersecurity protection behaviors, while cybersecurity awareness became more important for the older generation. Practical, policy, and research implications for increasing cybersecurity awareness and risk to promote safe cybersecurity protection behaviors are also discussed.

The world continues to experience a shortage of skilled cybersecurity personnel. The widely accepted solution for reducing this gap is raising awareness about cybersecurity. In response, many schools are integrating cybersecurity into the K-12 curriculum. Also, educational initiatives from the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, GenCyber, and the CryptoClub project enable universities to provide enrichment to middle- and high-school students regarding the importance of cybersecurity. Unfortunately, there is currently an absence of visual and straightforward tools that limits the feasibility of hands-on practice during these initiatives. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a new framework called CryptoScratch, which extends the Scratch programming environment with modern cryptographic algorithms (e.g., AES, RSA, SHA-256) implemented as visual blocks. Using the simple interface of CryptoScratch, K-12 students can study how to use cryptographic algorithms for services like confidentiality, authentication, and integrity protection; and then use these blocks to build complex modern cryptographic schemes (e.g., Pretty Good Privacy, Digital Signatures). In addition, we present the design and implementation of a Task Block that provides students instruction on various cryptography problems and verifies that they have successfully completed the problem. The task block also generates feedback, nudging learners to implement more secure solutions for cryptographic problems. An initial usability study was performed with 16 middle-school students where students were taught basic cryptographic concepts and then asked to complete tasks using those concepts. Once students had knowledge of a variety of basic cryptographic algorithms, they were asked to use those algorithms to implement complex cryptographic schemes such as Pretty Good Privacy and Digital Signatures. Using the successful implementation of the cryptographic and task blocks in Scratch, the initial testing indicated that $\approx 60\%$ of the students could quickly grasp and implement complex cryptography concepts using CryptoScratch, while $\approx 90\%$ showed comfort with cryptography concepts and use-cases. Based on the positive results from the initial testing, a larger study of students is being developed to investigate the effectiveness across the socioeconomic spectrum.

We have implemented a novel framework called AlgoScratch as an extension to the popular Scratch programming language. AlgoScratch is designed to simplify Data Structures and Algorithms education in the K-12 curriculum through visual and intuitive Scratch blocks. The framework implements widely used data structures such as Arrays, Stacks, Queues, Sets, and Maps; and algorithms such as Binary Search and Quick Sort. This poster discusses the implementation of the AlgoScratch blocks and their ability to simplify complex computer science concepts through visual programming that employs a simple drag and drop-based interface.

We have implemented a novel framework called CryptoScratch for teaching cryptography using the widely available Scratch platform. CryptoScratch enables K-12 students to learn how to use cryptographic algorithms such as AES, RSA, and SHA2 and combine these algorithms to build complex modern cryptographic schemes such as Digital Signatures and Pretty Good Privacy. CryptoScratch implements the algorithms as intuitive visual blocks abstracting away the mathematical and technical details of the algorithms. This poster discusses the implementation of CryptoScratch and how using these blocks can help students develop and understand the importance of cryptography in their digital lives.