“For Youth for Life” An Online Education System Usability and Security Improvement

Abstract

The FYFL (For Youth For Life) application is used to perform website functions which helps learning among communities across many content areas, supports the 4-H badge management system and creates users of different levels. The 4-H Digital Badging System is a web-based learning environment providing 4-H staff and instructors with an on-line platform to create courses, activities to approve and to issue proposed badges with more convenience and efficiency and to create a fun learning experience. 4-H in the United States is a youth organization administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This online learning application’s functions include forms that collect personal, classified and confidential information from different populations of different levels. A need arises to protect the privacy and security of personally identifiable information from hackers by assessing and improving the security of the FYFL application periodically. With the growing availability of the Internet, a number of diverse user devices facilitate the demands of online learning. Online learning brings with it all the security risks inherent to using the Internet. The consequences of a security breach are loss of revenues, damage to credibility, and loss of customer trust. Security is essential as a means to retain users’ trust in the online learning environment as any risk can affect students’ perceptions of a systems’ reliability and trustworthiness.