With ChatGPT, do we have to rewrite our learning objectives -- CASE study in Cybersecurity
This addresses curriculum design challenges for cybersecurity educators in the face of AI automation, though it is an incremental case study.
The paper examines how AI tools like ChatGPT affect cybersecurity education by analyzing learning objectives through the Understanding by Design framework, proposing that educators should adapt curricula to leverage these tools as allies rather than threats.
With the emergence of Artificial Intelligent chatbot tools such as ChatGPT and code writing AI tools such as GitHub Copilot, educators need to question what and how we should teach our courses and curricula in the future. In reality, automated tools may result in certain academic fields being deeply reduced in the number of employable people. In this work, we make a case study of cybersecurity undergrad education by using the lens of ``Understanding by Design'' (UbD). First, we provide a broad understanding of learning objectives (LOs) in cybersecurity from a computer science perspective. Next, we dig a little deeper into a curriculum with an undergraduate emphasis on cybersecurity and examine the major courses and their LOs for our cybersecurity program at Miami University. With these details, we perform a thought experiment on how attainable the LOs are with the above-described tools, asking the key question ``what needs to be enduring concepts?'' learned in this process. If an LO becomes something that the existence of automation tools might be able to do, we then ask ``what level is attainable for the LO that is not a simple query to the tools?''. With this exercise, we hope to establish an example of how to prompt ChatGPT to accelerate students in their achievements of LOs given the existence of these new AI tools, and our goal is to push all of us to leverage and teach these tools as powerful allies in our quest to improve human existence and knowledge.