Effectiveness of Experiential Learning for Keeping Knowledge Retention in IoT Security Education

This paper provides an experimental result showing learning effectiveness of experiential learning for cyber security education by comparing with non-experiential learning. The experiential learning, the experimental group in this research, took two lecture styles. One was a classroom-styled lecture that a lecturer teaches basic knowledge of cyber security to learners. The other one was practical exercises that learners made groups and experientially implemented their products with security protection. The non-experiential learning, the control group in this research, took an e-learning-styled lecture using a video educational material containing the same contents of the classroom-styled lecture in the experimental group but the contents about any practical exercise were removed. The learning effectiveness of the two learning groups were evaluated by comparing several metrics of pre-/post-test scores and delayed-test scores. The evaluation result indicates that learners who took the experiential learning could keep retaining knowledge they learned than learner who took the non-experiential learning.