Abstract—We present effectiveness measurements of five cybersecurity teaching interventions. We created a model for examining dependencies between teaching, students’ self-perceived cybersecurity knowledge and skills, cybersecurity related interests, attitudes, and self-efficacy, and intended and recalled security behaviour. We tested the model hypotheses and measured differences between before and after receiving teaching. We found teaching has moderate to strong positive correlations with knowledge, and skills, as well as topic, further studies, and career interests. Students with higher cybersecurity specific self-efficacy have a higher interest towards intervention topics, further cybersecurity studies, cybersecurity career, and cybersecurity research. Self-efficacy also seems to have a role in security behaviour intentions. This suggests that building self-efficacy is important, if teaching pursues behavioural change. Knowledge, skills, cybersecurity and skills specific self-efficacy, and recalled security actions had statistically significantly higher values after teaching than before it. However, pre- and post-measurements do not show statistically significant change in all variables associating with teaching, for example in interest related variables. This implicates that in teaching, we should consider how the interventions are supposed to raise student interest, as interest is connected to motivation and academic success.

Keywords—cybersecurity teaching, effectiveness, self-efficacy, attitude, behaviour, motivation

Cite: Tiina Schafeitel-Tähtinen, Jukka Koskinen, and Marko Helenius, "Measuring Cybersecurity Teaching: Case  University Students in Finland," International Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 481-490, 2024.

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