Nitty Gritty on Professional Jekyll Posts

Class blogs have grown into a core tool of the educational experiences, like the CSE 491 Advanced C++ Seminar and this summer’s WAVES Workshop, I’ve had the pleasure of facilitating. I typically have students contribute to the blog as part of their own learning experience.

I love this format because it helps,

• develop students’ professional communication skills,
• provide students a sense of accomplishment via a tangible, rewarding deliverable,
• showcase students’ work to the general public,
• showcase students’ work to potential employers,
• showcase students’ work to mentors’ evaluators,
• more effectively capitalize on students’ work after they leave the lab group or classroom, and
• sausage factory more useful information out into the ether that someday somebody will be very happy to have Googled upon.

This writeup provides guidance targeted to students writing entries for these class blogs (hi! ). It should also contain a few actionable nuggets for other authors writing professional blog posts with Jekyll, though! I hope that other instructors, in particular, may find this a useful resource for bringing similar models into their classroom.