doubling down on Hugo in ICT 302

I’ve been teaching my department’s class on content management systems since Fall 2019, which means that I’m coming up on my seventh(!) time with the course next August. Every time that I’ve taught it, I’ve used the Hugo static site software and the WordPress CMS as examples of content management concepts. WordPress is the more (most!) popular web CMS out there, and so it’s always been my main area of focus; I think that Hugo does a wonderful job of illustrating some CMS concepts, but it also has a higher technical learning curve, so I’ve always felt conflicted about its role in the classroom. Since the very first time I taught with this combination of software, students have expressed a clear preference for WordPress, and so every time I teach the class, I think that I’m going to give it up and just focus on WordPress the next time around.

These thoughts have been lingering since December, when I wrapped up my last teaching of this class, but as I’ve started thinking about how to teach ICT 302 the next time around, I’ve started wondering if I shouldn’t actually go the other way around: Ditch WordPress and double-down on Hugo. This is counter-intuitive, to say the least, but the more time I spend thinking about it, the stronger I feel about it. My default pedagogy in a tech-heavy class is to be the lifeguard at the edge of the pool, asking students to “dive in” with a promise that I’ll rescue them if the waters get too deep. Over the past couple of years, it’s felt more and more like that isn’t working. The idea behind “lifeguard pedagogy” is to help students develop a sense of exploration and independent troubleshooting, but I’m starting to doubt that constructivist exploration is actually yielding that fruit. I think I need to focus more on direct instruction of “this is how X works, now figure out application Y” in future offerings of the class.

So long as I’m already planning to step up direct instruction, why not apply it to the more difficult software? I honestly do think that Hugo provides a clearer understanding of core content management concepts: The files and folder structure gives a visual, pretty intuitive way of understanding site structure; working with GitHub branches and commits reinforce the need for content management workflows; and I think digging into individual files (and lines of code) for templates makes ideas like content vs. presentation more concrete than even WordPress’s excellent template builder. The fact is that my students weren’t taking the time (at least not at the scope or depth that I wanted) to learn the relatively intuitive WordPress through “lifeguard pedagogy,” and I think that leaning into the learning curve with some more direct instruction followed by modeling of troubleshooting and thinking might be helpful. Students in this major also need more exposure to basic computing concepts like the command line, file and folder structures, and code—working with Hugo would create some of that.

This could all blow up in my face. Frankly, WordPress is a more valuable line on a resume than Hugo is, and my students have always expressed frustration with Hugo. Last semester’s work with Hugo was an unprecedented mess of conflicts in GitHub for reasons that I never quite figured out, and I could be creating even more frustration for myself than I did last time around. That said, I feel like there’s something here. What I really want my students to learn is less about software specifics than it is about thinking through content management concepts and learning how to work with unfamiliar software. If I can structure that better with Hugo, then they might be able to think through it in WordPress better than they ever could when I was actually using WordPress in class.

• ICT 302
• Hugo
• WordPress
• content management
• content management systems
• lifeguard pedagogy
• teaching
• pedagogy