ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a tectonic shift in the way that institutions, ranging from k-12 to higher education, approach their teaching and learning strategies. It is an understatement to say that teaching effective and gamified Cybersecurity courses amidst the COVID19 pandemic placed an extreme pressure on faculty. While Zoom, WebEx, and Google Classroom virtual meeting were sufficient for some, others were in pursuit of platforms which could address the hands-on interaction component that happens in a class setting while isolating and/or removing some of the distractive and engagement-adverse ingredients that occur in traditional remote meeting platforms. To this end we present some challenges and opportunities which exist in the intersection of Cybersecurity learning and teaching through the Metaverse. As an extension we plan to measure the effectiveness of Metaverse towards Cybersecurity gamified remote learning by providing future research directions towards the ultimate goal of metamorphosing traditional Cybersecurity classrooms. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
It is an understatement to say that teaching efficient Computer Science and Cybersecurity courses amidst the COVID19 pandemic has placed extreme pressure on faculty. In general, this is true for any academic area which has a strong hands-on component tied to the theoretical counterpart. In this paper, we chronicle and provide our approach, from the lens of St. John's University Computer Science Chairperson and the Cybersecurity Program Director, on the suitability of utilizing WebEx HandsOn-Labs tool to close the instructional gap that exists between face-to-face and fully online teaching. © 2021 IEEE.