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The success of our project depended on forming a trusting, collaborative relationship with teachers and conducting in-depth interviews with adolescents who had never met our team. Yet, when we were ready to launch this work, it was not safe to meet with teachers or students in-person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nor was it possible to conduct site visits to the school. How could we continue collaborative module development and conduct meaningful research when the in-person methods we planned for our study were no longer feasible given the health and safety challenges of the pandemic? Our team had to make important decisions about module development and deployment while keeping students' and teachers' health and safety in mind. Rather than focusing on the problems of being unable to perform face-to-face data collection or module development, we began exploring new and alternative technological solutions. Building trust and engaging teachers while negotiating the communicative and relational restrictions inherent in online interactions was another challenge addressed in the paper. 

This position paper describes our research project to improve middle school students’ use of security “best-practices” in their day-to-day online activities, while enhancing their fundamental understanding of the underlying security principles and math concepts that drive AI and cybersecurity technologies. The project involves the design and implementation of a time- and teacher-friendly learning module that can be readily integrated into existing middle school math curricula. We plan to deploy this module at a high-needs, rural-identifying middle school in South Carolina that serves underrepresented students