CryptoClub Daily Ciphers

CryptoClub is an academic enrichment program designed to give students opportunities to explore their interest in cryptography in informal settings. In CryptoClub, students study cryptography and learn to use mathematical knowledge and skills to encrypt, decrypt, and solve secret messages. In 2013 the CryptoClub development team at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) received a grant from the National Science Foundation's Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to design an enhancement to the CryptoClub curriculum that would support students in creating and sharing tutorial videos focusing on cryptography skills. In the video tutorial enhancement, students take the cryptography skills they learned from CryptoClub to create brief tutorial videos that explain to other students how to solve ciphers and puzzles. The goals of the tutorials program is to augment students' analytical skills by encouraging them to communicate their methods for solving the problems, as well as to build students' communication skills. Evaluators from AIR conducted a developmental evaluation of the CryptoClub video tutorials program to provide responsive feedback for ongoing program development.

In a CryptoClub afterschool program, middle-grade students explore cryptography while applying mathematics to make and break secret codes. The playfulness and mystery of the subject is engaging to students, and the afterschool environment allows them to learn at their own pace. They encrypt, decrypt, and crack messages using mathematical ciphers that have been used by cryptographers and they learn about the colorful history of cryptography. Students practice with games and challenges, and along the way they develop their mathematics, reading, and vocabulary skills. With so much emphasis on high-stakes testing, teachers have less time during the school day for activities that are not directly related to these assessments (Walker, Wahl, & Rivas, 2005; Miller, 2003). The afterschool environment provides the opportunity to explore additional enriching topics and provide learning experiences that are different from, but supportive of, those offered in a normal school day (Schwartz&Noam, 2007). CryptoClub is an example of how the afterschool environment can be successfully used to focus on an interesting and relevant STEM1 topic from outside the regular school curriculum, while applying topics that are within the school curriculum. The CryptoClub Project at the University of Illinois at Chicago is in the third year of a five-year National Science Foundation grant to develop and test cryptography curricular material for afterschool and online use. The nature of afterschool programs requires that the material be flexible enough to appeal to a broad range of students and to meet the needs of leaders in different types of programs. Therefore, our project design involves gathering input from leaders and students in afterschool programs held in different kinds of informal educational settings throughout the development stages. Over the course of the grant, we are working with a variety of afterschool program leaders, including middle-grade teachers, leaders who train college and high school students to lead programs in schools and community centers, museum educators, and mathematicians who lead "Math Circles" for enrichment. As we develop the curriculum, we will also draw from the CryptoClub staff's experience in presenting cryptography in other settings: university outreach programs for middle-grade students, teacher preparation courses for pre-service middle-school teachers, and courses for math majors. To date, we have observed programs, interviewed students, and surveyed leaders to gain insight into how students and teachers engage with the cryptography materials. Our aim has been to learn which activities are engaging, as well as what challenges leaders face in implementing the program. Data from these sources has informed revisions and ongoing development of the cryptography curriculum.