World of Spies: Keeping Secrets (FutureLearn)

Offered by Purdue University,
World of Spies: Keeping Secrets (FutureLearn)

Get a taste of spy training, and learn how you can keep your secrets safe with a course designed for 13-18 year olds. What does it take to be a spy? Strong critical thinking and communication skills, a firm grasp of logic, and a love of puzzles are all useful. This course will help you develop those abilities while exploring the exciting world of espionage. You’ll learn about code-making and breaking, encryption, logical thinking and more as you find out whether you would make a good spy.

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What topics will you cover?

  • Introduction to spying and the common United States agencies that collect intelligence
  • Reasons for encrypting information
  • Various ways information is encrypted
  • Using logical thinking and linguistic patterns to break encrypted messages without a key
  • How traditional decryption methods led to the modern day computer
  • Why protecting information is important
  • How information we provide in social media can compromise the safety of our personal information

-The effectiveness of modern day encryption

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

  • Investigate reasons for encrypting information.
  • Compare various methods for encrypting information.
  • Apply logical thinking, linguistic patterns, and historical enciphering methods to encipher and decipher messages.
  • Evaluate weaknesses of various encoding and enciphering methods.
  • Debate the necessity and effectiveness of protecting information.
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