The design and evaluation of a cryptography teaching strategy for software engineering students

The present paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a cryptography module for final-year software engineering students. The emphasis is on implementation architectures and practical cryptanalysis rather than a standard mathematical approach. The competitive continuous assessment process reflects this approach and rewards experimentation. Students who excel at mathematics will invariably do well in cryptography. A key aim of the module is to try to extend this relationship to include good software engineers who may find mathematics more difficult. The approach is evaluated quantitatively by statistical analysis. The results of the statistical analysis show a significantly higher correlation between a student's performance in software engineering and cryptography than in mathematics and cryptography. These results indicate that this teaching approach is a better fit for software engineers than a standard approach.