Curricular Improvement Through Course Mapping an Application of the NICE Framework
Curriculum mapping is a useful exercise to ensure that necessary skills are integrated into a curriculum, that courses satisfy relevant state and national standards, to benchmark a program and ensure performance, to demonstrate the quality of a program to accrediting bodies, and to serve as a guide for programmatic activities such as credit transfer. This paper reports the result of an exercise to map the courses in a Computer and Information Technology Program at a large midwestern university with the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NICE Framework). The NICE Framework was selected because it the primary reference for public, private, and academic sectors for cybersecurity practice. It is a nationally recognized taxonomy for cybersecurity skills, abilities, and work roles.
The process started with a mapping of the NICE Framework to the overall course structure. This was done to understand the scope of the program’s coverage of the competencies identified in the framework. The NICE Framework takes the approach of cybersecurity work and breaks down the field into seven categories, which are then broken down into specialty areas and work roles with their attendant knowledge, skills, and abilities. The learning outcomes and topics covered in each class were identified. This information was then used to narrow down the categories to the competencies covered by each class. After mapping the overall courses to the categories and specialty areas, the courses were then mapped to the competency groups and competencies. Each course was then broken down into its topic areas and these were used to complete a more granular mapping of each course to knowledge, skills, and abilities as defined by the NICE framework.
This paper reports the results of the mapping to the NICE Framework. This paper then discusses the alignment of the program with the NICE Framework and puts forth recommendations to improve the alignment.