Teaching cryptography principles as an educational prank and celebration of international women’s day

• Rosiane de Freitas UFAM
• Karla Susiane Pereira UFAM
• Larissa Pessoa UFAM
• Ariel Bentes UFAM
• Ingrid Santos UFAM
• Isabelly Oliveira UFAM
• Tanara Lauschner UFAM

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wit.2018.3393

Abstract

In this work we present a dynamic involving a basic method of cryptography, historically known as Caesar Cipher, which was applied to the freshmen students of the undergraduate courses in Computing of the Federal University of Amazonas. This activity happened in the first week of classes, as a way to integrate the university studentes of computing. And, taking advantage of the fact that the date of such activity coincided with the International Women’s Day, March 8th, questions were also raised about the female participation in such courses. This work, therefore, aims to report the general activity performed and the applied dynamics, as well as to make considerations about the adequacy of the proposal, and how it was received and perceived by men and women university students, and the girls’ participation in the constructed context.

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