Impact of Gamification and Outdoor Learning Approach on Higher Education in Understanding and Awareness; A Case Study on Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah Students in Information Security Subject

Abstract

There are many campaigns of cyber security awareness being done to the public by many parties, educational institutions, cyber security industries, government agencies, financial institutions, and many more. Among the popular campaign methods is a talk or a forum. An ‘Explorace’ game has been introduced as an alternative way for students of the Information Security subject from the Faculty of Computing, Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah with the aim to convey the knowledge of cyber-attacks to spread awareness to the public while practicing the skills they have learned in the class and practicing how to campaign confidently. The encouragement to the students to spread awareness is the challenge of getting the top place in the game, and the pressure of having been asked by the public about the attacks they are conveying. The ‘Explorace’ game as a learning activity in the class will be more challenging, and the knowledge acquired by the students will be faster and longer-lasting with them. As a result, the students from this subject scored 61.2% as the average results in the mid-term test, while another batch of students who did not use this approach scored 58.94% in the previous semester. While in the final exam, 61.46% is the average result for this semester, compared to only 41.09% as the average result from the previous batch, which did not use this approach in learning. These results show that outdoor activities have a significant impact on enriching the understanding of cyber-attacks and the encryption concept among students. In another aspect of awareness, as many as 110 people had been approached to listen to the awareness campaign during the two-hour session of ‘Explorace’. 98% of the students are also satisfied with spreading the knowledge using this way.