Integration of a Generative AI into Graduate Level Cybersecurity Coursework
Integration of a Generative AI into Graduate Level Cybersecurity Coursework
File Size:
1011.24 kB
Author:
Andrew Hurd
Date:
29 November 2024
Generative AI is a concern throughout higher education. Educators are concerned with learners using the tools to complete coursework. It is known that the generative AI tools are high powered analyzers who can answer prompts and questions quickly. There are concerns with tools creating fictitious material and ghost references. Educators must determine if they are going to embrace the technology or if they are going to view the generative AI tools as a violation of academic integrity policies. If the educator embraces the generative tools, their role becomes the custodian of the work. If the educator does not allow the use of the tools in the course work then their responsibilities extends beyond grading, the educator must spend time determining if generative tools were used and job of the educator becomes more of being a police officer and scrutinize all references and content, in addition to spending time on creating informative feedback for the learners.
Embracing the generative AI tools and integrating them into the course work creates exciting new challenges that provides learners the opportunity to practice their problem-solving skills and fact checking capabilities. In a graduate level Global Cybersecurity learners were given case study prompts that were solved by generative AI tools. The educator worked the prompts such that ghost references and non-factual information was provided in the solution. The learners were given the completed assignments and were asked to fact find and correct the mistakes created by the tools. The case study was presented as a senior member of the c-suite used the generative tool to produce the result, but they needed the learner (from the position of a cybersecurity engineer) to fact find the case study report. In the second case study of the course the learner was provided with a similar prompt as the first assignment and was given two rubrics. One rubric is as if the learners completed the case study on their own and then second rubric was fixing the case study produced by the generative AI tools. Discussion board posts were used to analyze learner experiences.
This conference presentation will be about sharing the experience of the instructor on the course. The learner assignment will not be shared but the AI prompts and case study generative material will be shared.