Faculty: Nicoletta Adamo, Purdue (PI), Stephen Cooper, Purdue (co-PI), David Whittinghill, Purdue (co-PI), La Verne Abe Harris, Purdue (co-PI)
Sponsor: NSF CCLI Phase II award# 1022557
The purpose of this project is to create a serious game in conjunction with several laboratory exercises themed around computer security. This pairing of serious game task and laboratory exercise will be used across several introductory level computing classes at two and four year schools. Our belief is that students will learn the programming concepts better than they had previously, and also learn secure coding practices.
The Information Assurance (IA) Game is a role-playing serious game (RPG) in which the student plays as the main protagonist -- the "Data Detector". The player travels through computer techno-inspired environments in order to protect the robot citizens of the land from dangerous IA viruses that threaten the safety and security of information in IA Land. The player must eliminate the IA viruses; this happens when he/she gets most of the answers in the concept room correct. Data Detector (the player) must travel through each IA concept room, learning about information assurance to control the viruses. The goal of the game is for students taking an introductory computer science course to have an enjoyable experience while learning about the basic concepts of information assurance and understanding proper secure coding.