Malicious insiders continue to pose a significant threat to organizations. With their knowledge, privilege, and access to organizational resources, malicious insiders can attack the organization easier than outsiders, bypassing security measures. Current research about malicious insiders’ traits is often based on a limited number of cases and lacking empirical validation. With few exceptions, most research focuses on the effects of individual traits without investigation of their interactions. To identify the effects of these traits and their interactions, this study employs text mining to analyze 133 real-world malicious insider cases by comparing how the media portray malicious insiders to how the media portray benign insiders. This study sheds light on the predictive power of common traits of malicious insiders. Also, the interaction effects of some traits indicate that although they are not significant at the unary level, their co-occurrence differentiates malicious insiders with benign insiders as portrayed in the media.

This paper examines the effectiveness of adding formative assessment in the form of digital entrance and exit tickets to an introductory cybersecurity engineering course at a large Midwestern university. The set of entrance and exit tickets that offered low-stakes, weekly feedback for students to evaluate their understanding of the material was added to the Fall 2022 laboratory experiential learning activities. Entrance tickets focused students' attention on the task they were about to undertake, while exit tickets allowed the students to reflect on the outcomes of the lab. The laboratory report and examination scores from Fall 2022 were compared to Fall 2021. A statistically significant positive difference between the two semesters was found in overall lab scores and the second examination. Additionally, formative feedback showed the greatest benefit for sophomores and juniors.

Recently video conferencing has become a daily part of many lives for social interaction, education, work, and various other activities. Research suggests that the use of webcams during these interactions increases the richness of the interaction and therefore impacts the overall quality of the videoconference. Given this, understanding what drives individual choice to display or not display their webcam is important to understand. This research investigates the impact of facial attractiveness in the decision of an individual to display their webcam during a videoconference. A within-subjects experiment of 93 subjects across four treatments is used for this research. Results show that while men are driven by self-views of their own facial attractiveness, women are instead driven by their beliefs about what others think of their facial attractiveness. This provides important information for those who wish to create a richer interaction for the widespread use of videoconferencing tools.

This paper examines group-level social support and barrier effects on the individual intent to major in information technology (IT) using the social cognitive career theory (SCCT.) For the purposes of this program, IT majors are broadly inclusive, encompassing computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, and information systems. A multilevel approach allows examination of how self-efficacy within a group of students at a high school impacts the individual intention to major. The sample is more than 300 students from 40 different high schools across a Midwestern state who enrolled in a year-long inquiry-based educational program on IT-related topics including game design, cyber defense, and robotics. The results showed a higher self-efficacy in IT at the high school level had a strong positive impact on individual student choice to major in IT. This holds true even when the student's individual self-efficacy in IT had no significant impact. Therefore, the axiom that the rising tide raises all boats holds true.

Universities are now seeing the post-Millennial generation enrolling in freshman engineering courses. These outcome-oriented students engage with the course topics if they can see how the skills being developed can be used outside the classroom. To this end, the authors substituted a contemporary game controller, a PlayStation4 DualShock4 (DS4), for a microcontroller with sensors (Arduino Esplora) that was used in the freshman laboratory exercises to enhance the connection to the “real world” and increase engagement with the course concepts. Using laboratory scores from two consecutive fall semesters at a large, Midwestern university, the authors found the substitution of the DS4 for the Esplora had a significant positive effect on the total scores for the entire semester, as well as positive significant effect on the formalized lab reports.

In training assembly workers in a factory, there are often barriers such as cost and lost productivity due to shutdown. The use of virtual reality (VR) training has the potential to reduce these costs. This research compares virtual bimanual haptic training versus traditional physical training and the effectiveness for learning transfer. In a mixed experimental design, participants were assigned to either virtual or physical training and trained by assembling a wooden burr puzzle as many times as possible during a twenty minute time period. After training, participants were tested using the physical puzzle and were retested again after two weeks. All participants were trained using brightly colored puzzle pieces. To examine the effect of color, testing involved the assembly of colored physical parts and natural wood colored physical pieces. Spatial ability as measured using a mental rotation test, was shown to correlate with the number of assemblies they were able to complete in the training. While physical training outperformed virtual training, after two weeks the virtually trained participants actually improved their test assembly times. The results suggest that the color of the puzzle pieces helped the virtually trained participants in remembering the assembly process.

In the United States, the number of students entering into and completing degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas has declined significantly over the past decade. Although modest increases have been shown in enrollments in computer-related majors in the past 4 years, the prediction is that even in 3 to 4 years when these students graduate, there will be shortages of computer-related professionals for industry. The challenge on which this article focuses is attracting students to select an information technology (IT) field such as computer science, computer engineering, software engineering, or information systems as a major when many high schools do not offer a single computer course, and high school counselors, families, and friends do not provide students with accurate information about the field. The social cognitive career theory (SCCT) has been used extensively within counseling and career psychology as a method for understanding how individuals develop vocational interests, make occupational choices, and achieve success within their chosen field. In this article, the SCCT model identifies factors that specifically influence high school students to select a major in an IT-related discipline. These factors can then be used to develop new or enhance existing IT-related activities for high school students. Our work demonstrates that both interest and outcome expectations have a significant positive impact on choice to major. Interest also is found to mediate the effects of self-efficacy and outcome expectations on choice of major. Overall, the model predicts a good portion of variance in the ultimate outcome of whether or not an individual chooses to major in IT.