Volume 1
Abstract: Since 1999, the National Security Agency has used Knowledge Units (KUs) as a way to cover key areas. If an institution Since 1999, the National Security Agency (NSA) has used Knowledge Units (KUs) as a way to cover key areas. An institution would document how its courses mapped to the KUs. If an institution covered certain KUs and met other requirements such as being regionally accredited, offering academic degrees, and so on, then it would be designated as a Center of Academic Excellence (CAE). Academic reviewers found it hard to determine if an institution was fully covering the KUs. Periodically, the NSA’s stakeholders (such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Initiative on Cybersecurity Education, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense Office of the Chief Information Officer, and US Cyber Command) would review the CAE program. Recently, they decided that major changes were needed. The changes included requiring that an entire individual KU’s learning outcomes and topics be in one course instead of being in two or more courses. Achieving CAE was changed to being a two-step process. A program needed to complete the Program of Study validation step. Then a program would need to complete additional requirements before receiving the CAE designation. New applicants and current CAE holders would need to comply with these changes. At nearly the same time, Computing Curricula 2020 was published, which focused on competency-based learning. This paper covers how our university is working to comply with these new requirements by using the Competency-Based Education approach. Download this article: CPPJ - V1 N1 Page 18.pdf Recommended Citation: Strickland, F., (2022). Going Beyond Considering the Use of Competency Based Education for Designing a Cybersecurity Curriculum. Cybersecurity Pedagogy and Practice Journal1(1) pp 18-28. http://CPPJ.org/2022-1/ ISSN#: 2832-1006. A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of EDSIGCON 2021 | ||||||