An Interactive and Collaborative Approach to Teaching Cryptology

This work proposes and describes the implementation of a novel module for the standard Cryptool educational software that provides the ability to communicate over the local computer network and the Internet. The development environment consists of the C# programming language and the open interface for Cryptool modules. The solution we propose facilitates interactive and collaborative work of students on solving cryptology problems and enables a more even learning pace across the entire group. We present and discuss practical results of our approach tested in the classroom setting during 2010 and 2011. In addition to better final grades, we have observed an increase in student interest for this area manifested in better class and lab attendance, as well as more active and creative participation. We describe two lab exercises based on the proposed solution. We evaluate the impact of our solution by means of a statistical analysis.