Towards a Context-Based Approach for Software Security Learning

Abstract

Learning software security is one of the most challenging tasks in the information technology sector due to the vast amount of security knowledge and the difficulties in understanding its practical applications. Conventional teaching approaches give little attention to how to improve the effectiveness of learning in the domain of software security. Context-based learning has been proven to be a sound pedagogical methodology; however, it is still unclear how to synthesize the prescription in the domain of software security. In this article, a context-based approach to software security learning is proposed for structuring and presenting security knowledge. To evaluate the proposed approach, a quasi-experiment was designed and executed in the setting of a university learning environment. The experiment results indicate that the proposed context-based learning approach not only yields significant knowledge gains compared to the conventional approach but also gains better learning satisfaction of students.