Abstract:

In recent years, with the continued use of the Internet to search for and offer multiple services, cyber threats are on the rise. This led to the introduction of cybersecurity as a new computing-based discipline by the Joint Task Force on Cybersecurity Education in December 2017. The implementation of curricula in this direction will lead to expanding students' knowledge in this direction and in specialties at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski ”. Three years ago, during the winter semester of 2018-2019, a new discipline "Highly Secure Software" was introduced in the master's program "Information Protection in Computer Systems and Networks".

The main goal of the course is to expand quality characteristics of the students, namely the knowledge, skills and ability (KSA) related to software development, expanding them with the features of security issues in every phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC).

The expected outcomes of the course are: add security practices to each stage of the existing development lifecycle; secure test plan management; thread modelling; design and implement security architecture of system and security testing in each release procedure for the development of a test plan.

Good structuring, presentation, and interaction, as well as the selection of appropriate learning activities and resources, is a major challenge for an effective educational process for student learning. This defines the main purpose of the article, namely to present the methodology for designing and implementing the content of the proposed course by applying various techniques and practices of Instructional design.

To achieve this goal, a methodology is proposed that follows the ADDIE (Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) model. By using the five-stage process ADDIE we describe life cycle of the course development. During these stages, different levels of learning of Bloom's Taxonomy and mapped to appropriate events from Gagné’s approach. Bloom’s taxonomy is popular approach, that strengthen students learning by defining educational objectives in specific way. On the other hand Gagné's systematic approach, called Nine Events of Instruction, allows instructional development and delivery to be specified by using different events.

Proposed method is applied both to the learning content in presentations and hands-on labs, and to student learning activities for in-class and out-of-class work. The methodology was validated by analysing student performance and activity during the course delivery in the winter semester of the 2021-2022 academic year.

Keywords:

e-learning, instructional design, secure software, project-based learning.