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Education

10 min read

HTB in the classroom: How to create a captivating cybersecurity curriculum

Hack The Box (HTB) empowers educators and acts as an innovative toolkit for teachers looking to create cyber-landscape-ready students.

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ltnbob,
Jan 16
2024

Hack The Box Article

Table of Contents

As a passionate IT or cybersecurity educator, you are likely familiar with the challenge of making class fun, engaging, and effective. 

Education should be enjoyed, not just endured!

I have found that traditional approaches to teaching cybersecurity topics are not effective at engaging learners. (Personally, I don't think traditional methods of education adequately prepare students for the industry.) 

When I teach courses each semester, I aim to make classes, meeting sessions, and assignments a learning experience students truly enjoy and look forward to participating in.

In this post, I will share how I integrate Hack The Box (HTB) content in my classes to:

  • Ensure that students are engaging with complex subject matter. 

  • Make class more enjoyable (so they want to come to class).

  • Improve student performance and comprehension. 

Noteđź’ˇ: This post is based on my experiences as an educator and aims to inspire engaging practices that work best for you and your students. However, teaching is not an exact science. So your teaching strategies should be tailored to individuals in your class and your curriculum.

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Connecting HTB to your curriculum

As a teacher, I recommend you also aim to be the leading student. 

I've found that this approach fosters a deep level of respect. Your students will respect and trust you more if they can tell you know what you are doing and are familiar with modern platforms and the content you’re exposing them to.

Starting with Hack The Box, you should have experience playing and learning on HTB before integrating it into your class.

upgrade your curriculum with HTB
 

Start experimenting with the following services and select topics that map to student learning objectives and your curriculum:

HTB Academy 

The HTB Academy acts as a powerful learning resource to reinforce what your curriculum teaches. It also allows you to specialize content around specific skills and themes. 

The platform takes a beginner-friendly “building-block” approach to learning. Guided cybersecurity courses (called Modules) are divided into short sections, hands-on challenges, and regular checkpoints. 

The Academy’s balance of guided and hands-on learning enhances comprehension with active recall—which according to modern scientific literature, is one of the most effective ways to learn or teach anything.