Reference Curriculum

The goal of the reference curriculum is to integrate the value perspective into cybersecurity design decisions, with a focus on academia and industry training programs. It has been developed upon the basis of the identification of good practices of teaching ethics, responsible science, technology and engineering, and design at the (technical) universities that are part of the consortium.

Development of the Curriculum

For the development of the reference curriculum, we make use of the growing body of literature on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The project also make use of recent insights in educational studies, in order to guarantee that the reference curriculum includes innovative educational design methods, especially with regards to online forms of teaching. For creating the Curriculum, we studied existing curricula, courses, and other educational practices in the different educational institutes in Europe that make up the consortium.

Case Studies (PDF) Lectures (ZIP)

Content of the Curriculum

The CANVAS reference curriculum provides teaching material for academics and professionals on value-sensitive cybersecurity problems and solutions in the domains of business, health and national security. It provides teachers with the resources needed to deliver a comprehensive course on ethics and cybersecurity. One unique element to the Reference Curriculum is that it includes input from a number of ethical experts who have analysed a set of case studies, which raise ethical issues in cybersecurity. These experts have provided an example analysis for each case study highlighting how ethical issues in cybersecurity can be approached.

The Reference Curriculum consists of:

  • An overview document outlining the structure of the curriculum, including comparison with the MOOC
  • For each lecture a content descriptor document that contains the following information:
    • Brief summary of the lecture including learning goals and case study description
    • Presentation slides available for download
    • Open access literature emerging from the CANVAS book and other sources
    • Available videos on the CANVAS MOOC
  • 9 case study documents (1 page descriptor; 2 page example solution)

The reference curriculum and the MOOC are supplementing each other. In the following, an overview over the contents of both deliverables is provided.