Remote Learning | Techlist.io

figmaAug 25, 20212 min readCurated summary

Figma for students and educators | Figma Blog

Figma’s Education plan gives students and educators free access to Professional features and unlimited collaboration. The platform supports virtual and hybrid classrooms by combining teaching materials, activities, critiques, and community in one shared space. It also helps students build practical design skills, portfolios, and professional connections. ## Figma for Educators - Figma enables real-time and asynchronous participation, making it useful for in-person, remote, and hybrid teaching. - Educators can consolidate lectures, assignments, activities, and critiques into a single file with multiple pages. - Shared files encourage iteration and feedback, helping quieter students participate more actively. - Visual collaboration can create a more inclusive classroom environment, including for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. - Teachers can use Figma to build community, such as creating collaborative class yearbooks with comments, stickers, and student profiles. - Figma offers group demos and shared teaching resources to help educators adopt the platform. ## Figma for Students - Working collaboratively in Figma exposes students to modern, cross-functional design workflows used in professional settings. - Students can preserve research, iterations, and design process—not just final visuals—for portfolio reviews and interviews. - Figma Community files allow students to learn through duplication, remixing, and studying other designers’ work. - Student groups, hackathons, and other community programs provide opportunities to build relationships and gain experience. - Education newsletters highlight career-related topics such as hiring preparation, portfolio reviews, and internships. Figma recommends that students and educators use the free Education plan to create collaborative classrooms, document design processes, and connect with the wider design community.

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Remote Learning Figma User Experience User Interface+2

figmaAug 11, 20203 min readCurated summary

An open letter about my gap year | Figma Blog

The post explores Abigail Africa’s uncertainty about returning to USC during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether taking a gap year would better serve her education, finances, and career. She argues that remote classes cannot fully replace the community, hands-on projects, and extracurricular experiences she planned for her senior year. Her decision is also shaped by family expectations, cultural background, and Silicon Valley’s complicated “dropout” mythology. ## The Case for a Gap Year - Africa had envisioned her final year around a senior capstone involving pitching, running, and growing a startup. - A remote semester would mean losing experiences such as: - Collaborating in makerspaces - Experimenting with hardware - Recording podcasts and producing videos - Building close relationships with classmates and professors - Many students faced different constraints: - Some would attend classes from their childhood bedrooms. - Others questioned paying full tuition for Zoom-based education. - International students risked visa complications if they did not return. - Africa’s reasons for considering time off were: - Waiting to return until she could fully participate in campus life - Working during the pandemic and building savings - Gaining more startup experience before potentially founding a company ## Family Expectations and the Value of Education - Africa’s family worried that a gap year could become permanent and prevent her from finishing her degree. - Her immigrant grandparents sacrificed established careers and worked minimum-wage jobs to support their children’s education. - Her parents similarly prioritized education over luxuries and invested heavily in her schooling. - For Africa’s family, education is the reliable path to success, while gap years and dropping out appear risky and difficult to justify. - Africa recognizes that she does not yet have a convincing answer to the fear that delaying graduation could mean never returning. ## Education, Economics, and Cultural Identity - Students were weighing the practical consequences of enrolling, taking time off, or graduating during an unstable economy. - Key questions included: - How employers would interpret a gap year - What a degree is worth under these circumstances - How losing access to a campus community would affect students - Whether delaying school would create financial advantages - Africa also considers whether these calculations differ for her as a woman of color, particularly in an industry shaped by unequal access and representation. ## Silicon Valley’s Dropout Mythology - Technology culture often celebrates the highly privileged, frequently male, elite-university dropout who becomes a successful founder. - Africa has rarely seen herself represented in that narrative. - Her startup internship gives her hope that the industry may be opening to broader kinds of talent and that meaningful opportunities can exist without a completed degree. - At the same time, she questions whether apparent meritocracy is truly based only on ability, since representation, privilege, and access strongly influence who receives opportunities. Ultimately, Africa presents the gap-year decision as more than an academic or financial calculation. It is also a question of identity, family history, opportunity, and whether traditional educational paths remain the best route during a period of extraordinary disruption.

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Remote Learning Figma Zoom Startups+2

figmaApr 16, 20202 min readCurated summary

Figma + Lambda School: Where the remote classroom comes together to learn | Figma Blog

Figma’s collaboration features help Lambda School recreate the engagement and hands-on interaction of an in-person design classroom online. Students learn through shared presentations, live design work, peer feedback, and visible iteration rather than passively watching lectures. Because their work remains organized in Figma, the same files also support portfolio creation and continued peer learning. ## Interactive, Collaborative Lessons - Lambda School is a nine-month, live online program offering training in web development, mobile development, data science, and UX design. - Instructors present lessons in Figma during video conferences, allowing students to: - Zoom into designs and examine details. - Scroll through examples independently. - Use visible cursors to follow specific points in a presentation. - Students create and refine designs directly in shared Figma files. - Everyone can observe work in progress, learn from classmates, provide feedback, and remix existing designs. - This mirrors the collaborative workflows students will encounter on professional design teams. ## Real-Time and Asynchronous Feedback - Students and instructors can comment, tap each other for input, and work together in the same file. - Open audio, browser-based editing, and comments let students collaborate without constantly interrupting one another. - Students can work independently while classmates observe, take notes, or leave comments for later review. - When needed, an instructor or peer can join in and directly adjust pixels alongside the student. - Voting tools, such as stars, also encourage students to recognize and respond to one another’s work. ## A Lasting Record for Portfolios - Figma automatically preserves students’ designs, revisions, and project history. - This makes it easier to assemble a professional portfolio without searching through scattered files. - Students can focus more on interviews and career preparation while still presenting their development process. - Classmates’ work remains accessible after lessons, creating an ongoing resource for inspiration and learning. - The approach supports Lambda School’s broader career mission, which includes coaching, mentors, and connections to hiring partners. Figma’s use at Lambda School demonstrates how collaborative design tools can make remote education interactive, social, and career-oriented. Programs teaching practical creative skills can benefit from combining live instruction with shared workspaces that preserve feedback, iteration, and student progress.

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Remote Learning Figma User Experience Collaborative Design+3