An Information Assurance and Security Curriculum Implementation

Introduction The benefits and responsibilities having been fully weighed by the Purdue Calumet CIT Department, a strong case for positive acceptance was made for aligning the Purdue Calumet CIT Department with the ACM SIGITE (Curriculum) guidelines. The ACM SIGITE group has been working on a ABET accrediting program for information technology education in a four year program. These guidelines were mapped to multiple information technology disciplines, and specifically to a new information assurance and security program that is now accepting students. This document shows how the new program was designed and how it aligns with a variety of different certifying bodies and specifically with NTISSI 4011(NTISSI). The process utilized wove a tapestry of the guidelines as proposed by SIGITE. The topics when given were processed into outcome based learning objectives (Bloom, 1956). These objectives were then processed as requirements against the NTISSI 4011 certification standard as a prerequisite of the program. One of the basic outcomes of this new curriculum was at the two year level all information technology students would attain the NTISSI 4011 certification as well as a broad based information technology education. This is one of the closest implementations to the newly proposed SIGITE guidelines. Domains of knowledge Domain areas for the entire curriculum were addressed and knowledge area requirements were examined as found in previous papers (Davis, 2003; Laswell, 1999). These were invaluable resources and allowed the Purdue Calumet CIT Department to evaluate and concentrate on the most likely areas of specialization for undergraduate instruction. Having a pattern of courses put together that would advance students quickly from novice to subject matter expert was a goal. Having a framework for knowledge to be wrapped around also was part of the success strategy for the Purdue Calumet CIT Department. Each of the outcome base learning objectives was processed for level of skill based on the Bloom Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956) for education. The objectives were then looked at for area of expertise as applied to the individual curricula guidelines. Balance of instructional expectation was attained by insuring that freshman and sophomore classes were balanced strongly towards the lower levels of Blooms taxonomy with fewer upper level objectives. Consequently upper level courses have higher level objectives and significantly fewer lower level objectives with an expectation that prior courses prepared the student sufficiently. As part of the preparation of that expectation course designers met and built a map of the course objectives and knowledge requirements. Before beginning the mapping of objectives, the role of a student completing the course was discussed. What would a successful student from this program do as a career? Was the objective to create practitioners, scholars, or graduate school aspirants? These objectives were addressed within the Purdue Calumet CIT Department and a plan was put in place. The Proposed Process for Certification Starting with the documents provided by NTISSI, the Purdue Calumet CIT Department set up learning objectives that coincided. The first goal was to attain 4011 certification at the two year level even though the Purdue Calumet CIT Department is currently a four year program. Truly utilizing ad hoc methods, the learning objectives were split between the four courses known as platform technologies, operating system administration, networking, and fundamentals of information assurance and security. These four courses are split out from the objectives as set in the accreditation guidelines for 4011 certification and the outcome based learning objectives basically mirror 4011. Added to this and coinciding nicely with the draft ACM SIGITE guidelines (Curriculum) the courses also serve to help with this accreditation goal. Both of these programs sincerely support each other and help in the curriculum design process. …