Developing a Cybersecurity Educational Community Using Discord During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a hectic time for faculty at the higher education and K-12 levels. With many institutions having to switch to remote learning, faculty had to find tools and resources that could be used to create virtual educational communities. In this milieu of remote learning, the technology tools must foster a thriving educational environment and facilitate communications. In the undergraduate Cybersecurity and Network Management (CNM) program at Murray State University (MSU), the faculty adopted Discord for teaching classes, lab work, and for social events. Discord has been used by the CNM faculty for over a year now and has shown positive results. Students like using Discord for streamlining the communication process and for having the ability to establish real time communication with faculty. In this paper, the authors present their approach to developing and managing the use of Discord in the CNM program at MSU.