Abstract:

Children are spending an unprecedented amount of time online, with daily usage averaging between two and three and a half hours in Europe. While these numbers may be artificially high due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that the internet has become an integral part of many children's lives. Online engagement offers significant benefits, including socializing with peers, engaging with hobbies and interests, and completing school activities. However, it also introduces significant risks. Three of the most prominent threats are cybercrime, exposure to abusive material, and falling prey to misinformation online.

To address these threats, it is important to educate and engage with children in a discussion around these issues. However, the wide variety of threats introduces new problems for educators: Where should we start in teaching children to stay secure? Which skills should be focused on immediately, and which can wait? How do we prepare children to keep themselves safe in an age-appropriate manner? This paper outlines the development of a comprehensive curriculum to teach children essential cybersecurity skills based on what they actually need to increase their safety online. The proposed curriculum is a product of the SuperCyberKids project, which identified thirty skill statements via an extensive literature review and validated the findings through a Delphi study. The primary focus of this work is on how the thirty skills identified in the project were analyzed and sorted into seventeen modules. It goes on to describe the dependency stack process used to organize the modules into a coherent and comprehensive curriculum. This ensured that the proposed curriculum followed a logical progression of skills and addressed all the key findings of the previous research while being flexible enough to accommodate the different cognitive and social skills of the 8-13 age group, as well as different educational contexts.

The presented curriculum serves as a roadmap for educators and instructional designers seeking to design classroom activities, games, quizzes, or other materials that address the key skills for cybersecurity. It does this by providing clear intended learning outcomes for each of the proposed modules as well as focusing on moving from simple practical skills to more complex concepts in the field of cybersecurity. Future work within the project aims to integrate the curriculum into an online ecosystem for teachers and students. Additionally, it will provide recommendations for the use of game-based learning to support the curriculum and increase engagement.

In conclusion, the paper presents a comprehensive curriculum for teaching cybersecurity skills. It addresses the need for a clear understanding of what to teach and, as such, may be adapted to multiple age groups and contexts.

Keywords:

Cybersecurity, Curriculum design, Technology, Cyber Hygiene, SuperCyberKids, Children's online safety.