Margit Scholl, PhD, is Professor for Business Informatics and Administrative IT in the Faculty of Business, Computing, and Law at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau (TUASW) situated to the southeast of Berlin. Her research and teaching work centers around process and project management, (mobile) business applications, information security including baseline protection and awareness, multimedia and learning methods.
Prof. Scholl has assembled a research team (Innovation in Teaching/Learning) for her planned projects, a group that is to be completely supported by external funding. The team has been carefully chosen to bring together a broad range of interdisciplinary research and teaching experience.
In 2010, she founded the WILLE Institute (Wildau Institute for Innovative Teaching, Lifelong Learning and Constructive Evaluation), which is affiliated to the university under the umbrella of the Centre of Technology Transfer and Advanced Learning. She won the university’s research prize in 2011, and in 2013 she did a research semester at the University of Washington’s iSchool in Seattle, USA. In 2014, she had her university professorship at the TUASW converted to a five-year research professorship. Her aim in this new position is to focus on developing and deploying a holistic understanding of technology in an area that will in future be more strongly characterized by diversity. This focus will be applied to the following research area: “Holistically Building and Managing Smart Technologies in the Twenty-First Century.”
The digital transformation taking place in society and changes society behavior. The very interesting technical developments must be understood and designed in a user-friendly and user-acceptable way. In the sense of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) there must exist an information security (IS) for the use of mobile devices and services, in particular IS in design or IS in default. Nevertheless, the thus connected and simultaneously embracing hazards of abuse and organized crime must be prevented. Information security awareness (ISA) is a necessary response to the chal-lenges ahead.
IS and awareness must be an integrated part of these agendas. The goal of IS is to protect information of all types and origins. Here, the employees play a significant role in the success of IS, and the entire staff of an institution need to know about their specific roles and be aware of the information security management system (ISMS). However, we all tend to have an insufficient knowledge of the risks involved, of IS, and of the GDPR; this is compounded by carelessness in handling data and insufficient ISA. As there are still fundamental strategic deficiencies in the institutions themselves, humans should not be called “the weakest link” in the security chain. Backed by a clear conceptual approach, information security awareness trainings (ISAT) are essential for everyone. However, clas-sical trainings are not currently working very well.
Psychologically based research shows that a systemic approach might be helpful. This is where analogue game-based learning (GBL) comes into play. Psychological studies show the great importance of emotionalizing when communicating IS knowledge and the reliable exchange of experience about IS. However, in many institutions a change in (business/ad-ministration) culture is becoming necessary. IS must be integrated into all (business) pro-cesses and projects, and viable safeguards must be included. In the digital age every em-ployee should be aware of and competent in IS.
Game-based learning receives increasing recognition as an effective teaching and learning method for promoting motivation and inducing behavioral changes because simulation games enable active and experience-oriented learning by trial and error, repetition, team work and communication. They offer immediate feedback regarding the learning progress and are oriented towards the learners, their level of knowledge and their needs (learner-centered approach). A new integration of analog serious games and different learning methods, called awareness training 3.0, is needed integrating knowledge transfer, emo-tionality and team-based applications. This methodical triad is needed for the sensitization for information security. While an analog game version increases the understanding of the IS concept after playing the game, digital game versions engaged the individuals through voluntary repetition and therefore substantially reinforce the information learned earlier.
The keynote summarizes the most important scientific findings, transfers them to the prac-tice of IS trainings and shows examples.
