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INVESTIGATOR: Hermond, D.

PERFORMING INSTITUTION:
PRAIRIE VIEW A&M UNIVERSITY
P.O. Box 519, MS 2001
PRAIRIE VIEW, TEXAS 77446

CYBER SECURITY INTEGRATION FOR COOPERATIVE EXTENSION PROFESSIONALS

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: The goal of this professional development project is to integrate cybersecurity education and awareness into education offerings to enhance the technological competence of farm producers and families that Prairie View A&M University's Cooperative Extension (CEP) agents serve. This investment into personnel will enhance their expertise in cyber security, thus improving this competency across the campus and community. These experts will spearhead the integration of effective pedagogy into technology courses across the campus, given the imperative to infuse these courses with current cyber-related knowledge. To accomplish these, the PI and a College of Agriculture faculty member will spend extensive time obtaining training in developing coursework and instruction for cybersecurity education. Subsequently, they will develop and integrate cybersecurity protocols into two existing agriculture technology courses. Next, they will develop an online cybersecurity module in order to increase access by CEP stakeholders to this important information. These nascent knowledge and application will form the content of a professional development workshop to be available to all faculty at the University. This capacity-building innovation will help in safeguarding the agriculture technology infrastructure and in expanding opportunities for rural communities for the 21st century. It will improve the health, financial status and general quality of life of farm producers, families, aspiring entrepreneurs and youth in the 35 Texas communities that the CEP serves. This is consistent with NIFA's goal of "catalyz[ing] exemplary and relevant research, education, and extension programs."

OBJECTIVES: The major goal of this project is to integrate cybersecurity education and awareness in courses to enhance the technological competence of farm producers and families that Prairie View A&M University's Cooperative Extension agents serve. By enhancing their competence, they will be able to safeguard the agriculture technology infrastructure and expand opportunities for rural communities.

APPROACH: The ultimate aim of this cybersecurity integration project is to arm farm producers and families that PVAMU's CEP agents serve with current strategies to combat cyber-attacks. To actualize this aim, the project will enhance the coursework and pedagogy of PVAMU professors who teach technology courses to prospective CEP agents, to the development of a cyber-security training module for CEP field agents, and the creation of a faculty workshop. The logic model below (Table 1) delineates the inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes of this project. Below are the tasks designed to meet the objectives.Task 1. Startup: Conduct Needs Assessment. The principal investigator, (Hermond), will initiate an assessment of the needs of the communities served about their online vulnerabilities and their capacity to prevent or combat cybersecurity threats as they access information via IoT. Along with the agriculture faculty member (Jones), he will also survey the current coursework to identify areas that could be improved by the integration of cyber-related education. The collaborators in this assessment will include also include cooperative extension personnel from the four CEP units and the faculty/staff of the College of Agriculture and CEP leaders who instruct them on technology use and application. This will aid in meeting the first three objectives, described above.Task 2. Identify Available Training/Workshops. Based on the priorities identified through the needs assessment, the PI will then seek out workshops, courses and other training available that demonstrates how cybersecurity can be integrated in technology courses using pedagogical strategies that best suit the adult learners who serve as cooperative extension personnel. We will also determine how those strategies can be applied to students in the College of Agriculture. To illustrate, several Land-Grant institutions, including Cornell University and Mississippi State University, have cybersecurity courses or certification programs for agriculture majors, and these may be the best fit; however, final selection of external training will depend on the outcome of the needs assessment. This task will also support the actualization of the first three objectives.Task 3. Attend Best Workshops/Seminars/Environments. Once the PI identifies the most appropriate workshop that provides innovative strategies for integrating cybersecurity into technology courses, the master trainer and the COA faculty member will attend this workshop/seminar. Here again, the first three objectives will be the focus of this task.Task 4. Modify Current Courses. Upon returning from attending the external education opportunity, the PI, Dr. Hermond, and the COA faculty member, Dr. Jones, will then review the two courses (AGHR 1313: Agricultural Science and Technology, and AGHR 3323: Program Planning) and integrate the information gleaned from the workshop into the scope and sequence of the curricula for these two courses. This task will fulfill the requirements of the second objective.Task 5. Teach Updated Courses. Faculty members will then use this modified curriculum in subsequent offerings of these courses. This task also relates to the second objective.Task 6. Create Online Training Module. After teaching at least one of the courses, the PI will interface with the leaders from the four CEP units to evaluate and review existing technology training modules and develop or modify an online training module. They will make modifications based on any information learned from the teaching of the AGNR course(s). This new module will be made available to all CEP agents in the field. This task is designed to realize the third objective.Task 7. Conduct Professional Development Workshop. The PI will create a workshop for all interested faculty members. Special invitation will be given to COA faculty members, but it will be open to all faculty across the Prairie View A&M University campus. Task seven will fulfill the fourth objective.Task 8. Conduct Evaluation/Dissemination. Two evaluation processes will be applied. For the formative evaluation, the PI will monitor the following activities: integration of the cybersecurity information into the scope and sequence of the AGNR courses, and development of the online module to ensure that it contains valuable and user-relevant information. For both activities, the PI will emphasize using learning modalities that adult learners find most useful for engaging at the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy: application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. These modalities will include hands-on, visual, practical exercises. This formative evaluation will allow for real-time feedback about the progress of the cybersecurity professional development project, to enhance the value of all steps in the process. This will aid in ensuring that we will be disseminating the most relevant, cutting-edge information to the PVAMU community, fellow 1890 institutions, and other interested parties. Our fifth objective, which addresses evaluation, will be actualized via this task.

PROGRESS: 2018/03 TO 2019/10
Target Audience:There were three targeted audiences during the life of this project. Audience 1: We targeted cooperative extension agents (26) to give us feedback on the vulnerabilities they face in using the Internet of things. This was consistent with Task 1, our needs assessment. Audience 2: We developed a sequence of six cyber awareness modules to teach students in an Agriculture Technology class (AGHR 1313). This was consistent with Tasks 3 and 4 of the project. Audience 3: We also developed a workship to present to faculty across the university, to acquaint them with cyber challenges. This was consistent with Task 7 of the project. Changes/Problems:One of our PDs left for another university and so we were unable to use the funds designed for final evaluation. We did try to get an extension of the project, but were unsuccessful in doing so. Apart from that, we did not implement any major changes, nore did we face any major problems. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We implemented a training workshop and invited faculty across the university. This workship was a synopsis of the six vulnerability areas that we presented in the modules for students. Some 20 faculty members attended. Although the project has ended, our intention is to update this information and present to faculty at least once more, likely in spring 2020. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

IMPACT: 2018/03 TO 2019/10
What was accomplished under these goals? We were able to integrate cybersecurity education and awareness into the AGHR 1313 course. This is an agriculture technology course that is taught to all undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture and HumanSciences here at Prairie View A&M University. This integration covered six cyber awareness modules: 1. Computer Viruses 2. Software Assurance 3. Hacking 4. End User Challenges 5. Social Engineering 6. Digital Footprint via Social Media We converted these into a PowerPoint presentation for faculty during a faculty development training.

PUBLICATIONS (not previously reported): 2018/03 TO 2019/10
No publications reported this period.