Human factor methods for Information Security Research

This is a PhD-level course.

When implementing cyber- and information security theories and solutions to practical cases, possibly one main challenge is the knowledge shortage of and uncertainty associated with human factors. The practical needs to identify, measure, and possibly engineer them in a security research and development task become increasingly noticeable. This course selects and discusses some basic concepts and methods for understanding and engineering human factors through team-based learning, lectures, knowledge-sharing-oriented group discussion, and a term paper investigating the usefulness of human factor methods in the student's research work.

Knowledge:

The students are expected to know some selected topics of

• Science, research methods, and qualitative approaches
• Human factor methods and ergonomics
• Security practice
• Technological laws and ethics

Skills:

The students are expected to know how to

• Identify human factors and their potential impact on a research plan
• Measure and manage human factors by established methods
• Apply the human factor methods in research work

General Competence:

The students are expected to be

• Ability to argue and discuss human factor methods with peer researchers
• Ability to critique human factor methods in a specific research work
• Ability to suggest and recommend human factor methods to a specific research work

• Team-Based Learning (TBL) with lecture 2 sessions (2 x 90 minutes) (obligatory participation)
• 2 Guest lectures (obligatory participation)
  • Technological ethics
  • Security practice
• 4 post-lecture short reports (2-4 pages each) relating to one’s PhD work
• Course project which either identifies and maps human factor methods to your PhD research tasks, and arguing why they can be suitable, with evidence to prove / disprove their effectiveness; or innovates human factor method(s) to suit your PhD research task(s) with evaluation method and preferably evaluation result.
  • Course project plan presentation to define learning outcome, learning methods, and assessment methods
  • Course project mid-term assessment presentation
  • Course project final presentation and report for a summative assessment (10 - 20 pages, 10-50 references)