by Jocasta Williams
Some university subjects allow students to recover from a slow start. Miss a week, catch up over the weekend, cram before the assessment and you can often scrape through. Cyber security is not one of those subjects.
At La Trobe University, Dr Jabed Chowdhury teaches penetration testing and digital forensics, two highly technical subjects that are in strong demand in the workforce and central to students’ preparation for cyber security careers. Penetration testing in particular – often described as ethical hacking – asks students to think like an attacker in order to become a better defender. They need to understand how systems are breached, what tools are used, and how those same techniques can be used responsibly to expose vulnerabilities before bad actors do.
That makes the subject compelling, but it also makes it hard. As Jabed puts it, “to teach penetration testing is challenging because you have to teach the students the mindset of the hackers as well as the different techniques and tools they use to break systems. Almost all students have had no prior experience that prepares them for this learning, so there is a lot to master in a very short time.”
The challenge is not just the amount of content. It is the way the learning builds. Each week introduces a new layer of technical capability, and students need the earlier skills in order to complete the later tasks. In other words, this is not a subject where students can skip a topic and make it up later.
Students often arrive excited. As Jabed says, the word ‘hacker’ carries a certain appeal. But enthusiasm quickly meets with reality. “Within two weeks of the studies, they understand that it is a very demanding subject,” he explains. Students who do not already have a strong technical background can find themselves struggling almost immediately, beginning with something as basic as setting up the environment they need in order to practise. By the time some students realise they genuinely need help, they are often already behind.
That is especially problematic because the difficulty does not level off. It compounds. Skills taught in the first few weeks are prerequisites for what follows. If students miss the foundations, they cannot simply bluff their way through later practical work. Jabed describes this with striking clarity: “if you cannot keep up in week one or two, it’s very difficult to catch up in week five or six.” He notes, too, that students are often embarrassed or shy about asking for help with something taught earlier, particularly once the class has moved on. The result is a familiar but dangerous pattern: students quietly fall off the ramp and cannot get back on.
This reality shaped the teaching challenge. Teaching cyber security at La Trobe University had previously been structured around weekly labs with accompanying detailed lab manuals with screenshots. But that was not always enough to support students through the most difficult moments.
The issue was not that students lacked support altogether – it was that the available support often arrived too late, or in ways that were inefficient for everyone involved. Students who got stuck during a lab could raise their hand and ask a tutor. But in a two-hour session, that kind of one-to-one troubleshooting comes at a cost. One student’s technical problem can take several minutes to resolve, and while that happens, the rest of the class waits. Outside class, students often turned to email, which created another bottleneck: long back-and-forth exchanges, repeated explanations, and hours of staff time spent diagnosing issues individually.
The teaching team wanted to support struggling students without compromising the lab experience for everyone else. As Jabed explains, the challenge was finding a way “to balance the support that the students need with the available in-class time and realistic workload management for the teaching staff.”
Their solution was to introduce weekly lab videos. These videos did not replace the written manuals – they complemented them. Jabed and his team recorded themselves working through the labs step by step, showing the exact workflow students needed to follow. They also highlighted the points where students were most likely to struggle – demonstrating what common errors look like and how to resolve them. That visual walkthrough made a critical difference. Instead of guessing where they had gone wrong, students could compare their own screens with the recorded demonstration and identify the issue themselves. Even when they did still need help, they were able to ask far more precise questions.
The effect was immediate. The number of emails dropped significantly, and lab discussions became more productive. Students could move through the required activities more smoothly, leaving more time for deeper exploration rather than simply trying to complete the basics.
The introduction of lab videos did more than reduce the teaching team’s inbox. It improved the quality of the learning experience in the classroom. Previously, much of the lab time could be consumed by troubleshooting simple procedural issues. Now, students arrive with a clearer understanding of the steps involved and a stronger sense of where they might be stuck. That means tutors can spend more time discussing complex ideas and less time resolving small setup errors.
In a subject like cyber security, that shift is significant. Technical competence develops through practice, and practice requires time. If students spend the entire session trying to finish the minimum requirements, they never reach the point where they can explore further challenges. But when students are able to complete the core lab tasks more efficiently, they gain both time and confidence. That opens the door to optional exercises, deeper experimentation and a stronger understanding of how the tools actually work.
For Jabed, one of the most important outcomes of the intervention has been the impact on student confidence. When students can complete their labs successfully within the allotted time, the experience changes. Instead of feeling stuck or overwhelmed, they begin to feel capable of tackling more complex challenges. That confidence encourages them to explore the optional materials and additional exercises provided in the course.
Over time, that extra practice translates into stronger technical skills. Students who once struggled to keep pace can become proficient practitioners, able to demonstrate their abilities not only in assessments but also in job interviews and industry placements.
Jabed is careful not to overstate the numerical changes in grades, although the pass rate has improved slightly. What matters more to him is that students who might previously have withdrawn or failed the subject are now able to complete it successfully. Some of those students go even further, building enough skill and confidence to secure employment in the field. For an educator working in such a demanding discipline, that outcome is deeply rewarding.
The broader lesson from the cyber security teaching team’s experience is that in cumulative, hands-on subjects, the right kind of support can make a profound difference. Weekly lab videos did not make penetration testing easy. What they did was make the learning process more transparent and repeatable, allowing students to revisit complex procedures until they understood them. In a field where graduates are expected to solve real-world problems and defend critical systems, that kind of confidence is not simply a nice outcome: it is part of what prepares them to become capable professionals.
