Taking Flexible and Diverse Approaches to Get Undergraduate Students Interested in Cryptography Course

With the extensive application of cryptography technologies in our lives, cryptography course has been paid more attention to in many universities. The contents of cryptography course are profound and complicated, so it becomes quite hard for some undergraduate students with less mathematical background. In addition to, the class hours have not enough and experimental condition is very poor in some universities. Many students usually have negative feelings in learning. How could we get them interested in cryptography course? This paper proposes teaching methods should be flexibility and diversity, and they cover a lot of ground such as telling stories on breaking ciphers, using interactive education software to demonstrate cryptography algorithm, reinforcing students’ mathematic concept, gaining more practical experience in our lives, exploring and discussing on a particular subject. After having taken these approaches to teach students cryptography course, we finally have eliminated students’ negative feelings of be afraid of difficulties and have aroused their enthusiasm in learning.