Case study: Oxford University Cyber Security CDT using Ada Logics training for electives
16th August, 2021
In spring 2021 Ada Logics engaged with Oxford University Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security to deliver three online cyber security courses to DPhil (PhD) students. Ada Logics offers training and services in advanced software security topics and we help teach and serve highly targeted organisations in software security topics. This case study will go over how we delivered training to cyber security students at Oxford University.
"I'm really loving the courses and the exercises are all great and follow a really comfortable progression".
- James Pavur, DPhil student.
Challenge
The Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Cyber Security at Oxford University offers a four-year programme where students have a year of intensive education in cyber security followed by three years of research, leading to a DPhil (Oxford’s PhD).
The students in the CDT regularly take elective courses focusing on cyber security topics and the CDT was looking for courses that focused on software security and that could be delivered in a remote manner. Quality of the courses and relevance of the concepts were of highest priority, and needed to be taught by industry-leading experts.
Our solution
Ada Logics partnered with the CDT to deliver three courses and 30 student enrolments in a manner where the students would carry out self-paced online courses composed of videos, lecture notes, exercises, assignments and more. During the courses the students had access to an instructor for questions as well as would receive instructor feedback on assignments.
The three courses we delivered focused on software security and vulnerability analysis, and all three of the courses are industry relevant as well as delivered by subject-matter experts. The courses we delivered is part of our Pioneers of the future scheme and included:
- Foundations of reverse engineering
- Foundations of binary exploitations
- Applied source code fuzzing
Student enrolment and participation was straightforward in that students would simply access the online training by way of their university email. All content was then available and the students could discuss with the instructor online.
The students went through the courses over a period of six months, and studied them around their own research. Following completion of a course they would receive Ada Logics certificates. The students and staff involved took the courses highly positively, as can be seen by the reviews they left:
"I'm really loving the courses and the exercises are all great and follow a really comfortable progression".
- James Pavur, DPhil student.
"I really enjoy your courses. Especially the structure with hands-on parts. Also, the way you lecture in the videos and the notes given after; all make things easily comprehensible for us".
- Munir Geden, DPhil student.
"Enrolling our students with Ada Logics was a fast and easy process. This in combination with the quality of the courses made us very pleased with Ada Logics".
- David Hobbs, CDT administrator.
About Ada Logics software security courses
The three courses taught to the CDT students are all focused on topics that are highly relevant in the cyber security industry. The overall themes of the three courses revolve around how to:
- Assess if a piece of software is secure.
- Analyse software without access to the source code.
- Find vulnerabilities in software.
- Exploit vulnerabilities in software.
All of the courses taught by Ada Logics are self-paced by nature and the student will go through the material according to their own schedule. The courses are composed of a variety of learning entities, including lectures, quizzes, exercises and lecture notes. The student can reach out to an instructor at any point and will also receive personalised instructor feedback on assignments. In addition to this, our courses focus on:
- Easy enrolment procedures.
- Scaling to large numbers of students.
- Delivering the highest quality of content.
About Ada Logics training platform
We have developed our own dedicated education platform focused on delivering cyber security education. Our platform makes it easy for students to learn through a variety of channels. Specifically, our courses deliver knowledge by way of:
- Lecture videos of high quality recording and editing
- Video demonstrations and screen recordings show techniques in practice.
- Lecture notes with in-depth comments on the contents.
- Varying styles of assessment structure for all content.
- Well linked course structure to ensure retention of material.
- Assignments that require the student to solve larger tasks over a longer period of time.
The above-mentioned assignments receive personalised instructor feedback to guide each student based on their individual performance.
Screenshots of our platform
