A serious game to promote self-efficacy regarding data privacy among secondary school students

Abstract Recent studies indicate that K-12 students lack competencies in data privacy and have low self-efficacy in this context. Related work has shown that serious games can potentially foster students’ self-efficacy through neutral feedback and individual progression. Therefore, a serious game called LetsProtectDATA was developed, where students play an employee in a company tasked with solving data privacy problems at their own pace, possibly enhancing their self-efficacy. Player experience and self-efficacy regarding data privacy were assessed in a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test, post-test, and control group design. Overall, 181 computer science students (female = 117, male = 63, other = 1) from six secondary schools participated in the pre-test and post-test. Students in the experimental group showed significantly higher self-efficacy regarding data privacy after the intervention, in contrast to students in the control group. Thus, indicating that LetsProtectDATA can foster students’ self-efficacy regarding data privacy. This easy-to-implement serious game can be implemented by other educators in formal and informal learning settings.