Evaluating the Utility of Research Articles for Teaching Information Security Management

TL;DR

This paper proposes a framework to help educators evaluate the suitability of research articles for teaching Information Security Management, addressing the challenge of selecting relevant, practical papers from a large pool.

Contribution

It introduces a novel evaluation framework specifically designed for instructors to assess research articles' relevance and practicality for teaching ISM.

Findings

Framework aids in selecting suitable teaching articles

Helps bridge gap between research focus and practical teaching needs

Supports educators in curriculum development

Abstract

Research articles can support teaching by introducing the latest expert thinking on relevant topics and trends and describing practical real-world case studies to encourage discussion and analysis. However, from the point of view of the instructor, a common challenge is identifying the most suitable papers for classroom teaching amongst a very large pool of potential candidates that are not typically written for teaching purposes. Further, even in practice-oriented disciplines such as Information Security Management (ISM), high-quality journals emphasise theoretical contribution and research method rather than relevance to practice. Our review of the relevant literature did not find a comprehensive set of criteria to assist instructors in evaluating the suitability of research articles to teaching. Therefore, this research-in-progress paper presents a framework to support academics in the process of evaluating the suitability of research articles for their teaching programs.