This paper reports on the experience of using the EDURange framework, a cloud-based resource for hosting on-demand interactive cybersecurity scenarios. Our framework is designed especially for the needs of teaching faculty. The scenarios we have implemented each are designed specifically to nurture the development of analysis skills in students as a complement to both theoretical security concepts and specific software tools.

The seeming contradiction between “banner blindness” and Web users' complaints about distracting advertisements motivates a pair of experiments into the effect of banner ads on visual search. Experiment 1 measures perceived cognitive workload and search times for short words with two banners on the screen. Four kinds of banners were examined: (1) animated commercial, (2) static commercial, (3) cyan with flashing text, and (4) blank. Using NASA's Task Load Index, participants report increased workload under flashing text banners. Experiment 2 investigates search through news headlines at two levels of difficulty: exact matches and matches requiring semantic interpretation. Results show both animated and static commercial banners decrease visual search speeds. Eye tracking data reveal people rarely look directly at banners. A post hoc memory test confirms low banner recall and, surprisingly, that animated banners are more difficult to remember than static look-alikes. Results have implications for cognitive modeling and Web design.

This paper explores the behavior of experts choosing among various methods to accomplish tasks. Given the results showing that methods are not chosen solely on the basis of keystroke efficiency, we recommend a technique to help designers assess whether they should offer multiple methods for some tasks, and if they should, how to make them so that they are chosen appropriately.

This article analyzes details of the cognition involved when people use spreadsheet software, a task that is both a major microcomputer application and a cognitively intense task. This task is analyzed in terms of the GOMS model (Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983), to test the generality of the model and to extend its set of parameters. We found that people using two seemingly similar spreadsheet applications, Lotus 1-2-3 and Multiplan, require very different amounts of time to accomplish the same tasks. Experienced users of Lotus 1-2-3 took far longer to complete the same four tasks than experienced Multiplan users did. It was found that some of additional time was due to the fact that Lotus 1-2-3 offers users a choice of two general methods to enter formulas. Lotus requires that the user decide which to use; this decision takes time. And, when the users type the address of the cell in which values reside instead of using the cursor to point to it, they pause a long time before typing each entry. Presumably they are scanning the screen and calculating the coordinates to type in during the pause. Again, these cognitive processes take time. In an analysis of a second task-adjusting the column width-there was substantial evidence that the performance changes when a method is repeated in close succession. This repetition affects the parameters that reflect the time it takes to retrieve command parts from memory. When the parameters for scanning, decision, and repetition were added to the keystroke analysis of our task, we found remarkable correspondence with the basic parameters from the Card et al. (1983) original work: The keystroke times and mental preparation times from their original experiments were very close to the estimates of those same parameters in our tasks. However, in our analysis of the spreadsheet task, we expanded the parameter set in the keystroke model to account for performance in tasks that require substantial planning, scanning, and repetition.