Figma is a professional design tool designed for business but also optimized and refined for educational uses. To be more specific, it is a whiteboard design tool, so it is designed for teachers and students to use collaboratively.
To give you an idea of the scale of this tool, at one point Adobe was going to buy it for $20 billion. After Google cut support for its applause board tools by the end of 2024, Figma's offering is perhaps more relevant than ever to educational needs.
While this tool is designed, developed and updated for professional use, it is also designed for education and offers many of these powerful features for free. So while the tools are extensive, the interface is beautifully designed, as you would expect, to make it very easy to use for both teachers and students.
This guide aims to lay out everything you need to know about Figma to see how you can use it in your classroom.
What is Figma?
figure is the professional design tool, while the online whiteboard part is specifically called FigJam. The two work together, but in education the FigJam part may be more powerful in the classroom.
Teachers and students have access to Figma and FigJam for free, which means access to powerful design tools within a framework that can be used collaboratively, between teachers, students, or a combination of both.
So from classroom discussions to brainstorming, this can be used live in the room or across devices and accounts as needed. Crucially, it is designed for multiple users at once, making it a great way to create group work digitally.ai/” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” data-url=”https://audiopen.ai/” referrerpolicy=”no-referrer-when-downgrade” data-hl-processed=”none”>
How does Figma work?
Figma initially requires you to register as a teacher using your school email address. Once this has been confirmed, it is possible to start using the platform through your educator account with its powerful features, for free.
To skip all the professional layers, select the “FigJam for Education” tag, where you can explore the different templates to get started easily. Find one you can use and save it as a draft so you can edit and work on it as needed.
A good way to start getting to know this professional tool is to try the FigJam Basics template. This provides a step-by-step guide on how to edit and take advantage of the tool's many features. It guides you through the various gestures and commands, making it a great way for both teachers and students to get started or refresh basic controls.
Create a team as a way to group students or classes so you can then easily access projects and monitor activity as collaborations progress.
What are the best features of Figma?
Figma and FigJam are great for a variety of collaborative tasks, from brainstorming and planning to discussions and group project work. Using collaboration and real-time feedback can be a great way to teach working in groups, digitally, but also to monitor and interact as a teacher within that framework.
The ability to enter Dev mode is a useful addition. This allows students to see the code and the design tools, bringing those two worlds closer together. This can help teach students code, but also see how that code translates, live, into real-world use cases.
FigJam has an ai widget that uses ChatGPT to intelligently support the use of tools within the system. Teachers and students can ask you to create custom templates, generate summaries, classify sticky notes, brainstorm, create plans, generate flowcharts, and much more. Not only does it teach students how to work with ai, but it actually saves time on design projects and creations.
How much does Figma cost?
Figma and FigJam are free to use in education for both teachers and students. Teachers simply need to register for an account, using a school email address before receiving an Educator account that can be used by students who are part of that class or group.
K-12 districts qualify for free access to Company Figma level. Higher education institutions qualify for the Professional free level.
Best Figma Tips and Tricks.
Learn from the professionals
Use pre-designed templates to see how the professionals build. Then reverse engineer or group edit it to understand how to work with this tool effectively.
build a site
Teach the class to work on creating an actual website, or websites, as a class or group working collaboratively to make a presentation, perhaps as part of a college application or resume, showcasing their accomplishments.
Code it
Use development mode to work with coding or use plugins to customize that code, in either case teaching students as they learn from the templates.
