Improving student learning performance in a virtual hands-on lab system in cybersecurity education.

This Research Work in Progress paper presents a study on improving student learning performance in a virtual hands-on lab system in cybersecurity education. As the demand for cybersecurity-trained professionals rapidly increasing, virtual hands-on lab systems have been introduced into cybersecurity education as a tool to enhance students' learning. To improve learning in a virtual hands-on lab system, instructors need to understand: what learning activities are associated with students' learning performance in this system? What relationship exists between different learning activities? What instructors can do to improve learning outcomes in this system? However, few of these questions has been studied for using virtual hands-on lab in cybersecurity education. In this research, we present our recent findings by identifying that two learning activities are positively associated with students' learning performance. Notably, the learning activity of reading lab materials (p < 0.01) plays a more significant role in hands-on learning than the learning activity of working on lab tasks (p < 0.05) in cybersecurity education. In addition, a student, who spends longer time on reading lab materials, may work longer time on lab tasks (p < 0.01).