Short course teaching of cyber security for mid-career physical security professionals with limited academic background

This paper addresses the approach taken by the C-SAFE (Cyber - Security, Auditing, Forensics, Education) team at the University of Greenwich when asked to produce a one week course for physical security experts who wished to know more about cyber security technologies. This paper discusses the expectations of both teachers and learners and their resultant feelings after the course had been delivered. Mature adults, returning to education for a short course, are liable to face various problems. They are not conversant with the academic approach and have been absent from formal learning for many years. They are required to learn a great deal in a short time when they have been learning ad-hoc on-the-job as they progressed through their careers. The academic detail of ‘how and why’ things happen contrasts with the accumulated practical on-the-job experience of simply making things happen. The academic team itself also faced various problems. They lacked the practical everyday experiences of the students they were teaching, they were concerned about how to maintain the pace of learning with relatively ‘novice’ students, and how best to involve the students in the academic material especially as the students had varying background knowledge in cyber security technologies. Also, we discuss the problem of how to assess the students – what sort of assessment to give them, how to mark it, what kind of feedback to give etc. A questionnaire was given to the students after the course delivery in order to explore their professional role, their expectations of the course and their suggestions for improvement. The students were given a graded assessment and asked about their feelings on their resultant marks – whether they did as well as they were expecting or otherwise. This has resulted in a set of useful guidelines for teaching short courses in cyber security to mature learners involved in lifelong learning to enhance their career progression and knowledge diversity