Teaching Cybersecurity: The Evaluation of Nabbovaldo and Blackmail from Space

Interventions to raise awareness and promote cybersecurity behaviors have recently become widespread, but much still needs to be done to broadcast this knowledge on a large scale. Video games (i.e., serious games), can represent a valuable way of building digital skills because they are shown to improve learn-ing through active involvement, by increasing and motivating emotional connec-tion to content. The Ludoteca del Registro .it developed a video game named "Nabbovaldo and blackmail from space". In this study, 270 students (Mage = 12.66, SD = .70) from four different schools in Tuscany were involved in a pro-ject aiming: (a) to evaluate the video game in terms of satisfaction and usability, (b) to understand the effectiveness in improving cybersecurity knowledge. The results show that the video game was appreciated by the students. A great im-provement emerges in the student's cybersecurity knowledge, particularly for those who have played the videogame. Video games represent an extremely im-portant educational tool, to be exploited and further integrated within our schools. Future studies have to replicate these results, adding a control group to reach a more structured research design.