a week of teaching Indonesian girls UI/UX 👩🏻‍💻

the journey and learnings about being a teaching assistant!

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Generation Girl

7 min readDec 26, 2022

Hi! To ease your reading, this writing will be divided into topics, namely:

📝 Introduction
💁🏻‍♀️ What’s Generation Girl (GenG)?
📱 About GenG’s UI/UX Class
👾 Our work!
🌱 Some notes & insights from this experience
💪 The team behind Winter Club
✨ Closing

📝 Introduction

This December, me and my previous mentor from tiket.com, Alvin volunteered to teach UI/UX Class at Generation Girl’s Winter Club. This program was very familiar to me as I was a former rookie and volunteer in GenG, and have been following them since 2018 (thanks to JK who introduced and brought me along!).

I fiddled with their Web dev and UI/UX classes back in middle and high school, experienced both offline and online classes, and witnessed their community and curriculum growth throughout the years.

Without their program, I wouldn’t be this invested in UI/UX. GenG has played a huge role in kick-starting my UI/UX journey. So, I wish to do the same to other girls, who might share the same pathway as I do :).

💁🏻‍♀️ So, what’s Generation Girl (GenG)?

Generation Girl is a non-profit organization that equips young women with hard and soft skills to become future female leaders through STEM-based programs. They have 3 core programs: Electives X, Electives Lite, and Holiday Club.

This time, I volunteered as a teaching assistant (TA) in their Winter Club, a free week-long STEM boot camp for girls from middle to high school years. Not only class activities, but GenG also provides speaker sessions and field trips in between the week for rookies to enjoy and learn.

📱 About GenG’s UI/UX Class

UI/UX class is split into 2: English and Bahasa Indonesia, where I and Alvin handled the English class that consists of 12 rookies. In comparison to previous years, this winter club uses a different approach to deliver the lessons. Which is through Flipped Classroom.

This new approach taught UI/UX concepts asynchronously through online videos produced by GenG team, allowing the 5 offline days to be solely used for hands-on activities that are related to each respective lesson video. At the end of the week, rookies are expected to present their final project that encapsulates the learnings and exercises they did.

👾 Our work!

As a Teaching Assistant, I worked closely with the mentor to tackle pre-class preparations until executing the class itself. Here’s a glimpse of it:

Pre-class

Thankfully GenG team provided us with their curriculum and lesson plan references. Hence, we created lesson plans based on those foundations. The biggest challenge was to translate these ‘online’ activities into offline, as this marked their first offline Winter Club after 2 years.

a peek at what we prepared! We made printable templates, Kahoot games, and figjam + figma activities 👾

All preparations took around 2 weeks. We also had weekly meetings with an adviser (huge thanks to Echa & Gupita!) to help us plan and ensure that our activities were aligned with GenG’s expectations.

Class

During the class, the mentors led most of the sessions, however, I was given the opportunity to lead some as well. Aside from conducting activities, we tried our best to bond with the rookies and volunteers too.

🌱 Some notes & insights from this experience

Personal Learnings

Building empathy. Shifting my perspective from a rookie to a TA humbled me on how difficult teaching is. There are so many thoughts and efforts exerted to make this program work, from preparing numerous class activities to successfully executing them. Questions like “Is this instruction clear? Is it too difficult? Is this aligned with our desired output?” were raised often as we wanted to understand rookies’ perspectives better and deliver the best experience for them. Overall, this experience taught me to appreciate the team and teachers behind these programs more 🙌.
Improving self-confidence and being in discomfort. This whole week was purely out of my comfort zone. As a person, I was known to be a very closed book. In gatherings, I am usually the one who listens most and rarely talks. But this time, I became the opposite. I initiate conversations and share stories (eg. insecurities) so it can serve as an example for rookies to be comfortable and build confidence in opening up.
Learning by teaching. We are constantly challenged to explain UI/UX concepts to the rookies. And explaining these concepts, helps us improve our own understanding of them. Furthermore, teaching design skills such as Figma + Figjam and assisting them with it also refine our own skills. So, it’s a win-win!

“To teach is to learn twice.” — Joseph Joubert

Notes on facilitating a class

Ice-breaking games are important for rookies to bond and get to know each other. On our 1st day, we played a game called “Switch, Share, and Store”. Rookies need to find a pair and share a fact about themselves within 1 minute. This game run 5 rounds, so rookies need to switch pairs 5x and exchange facts between them. At the end of the game, we gathered in a circle where everyone will share something about their pairs. The time pressure and game instructions forced rookies to socialize with one another.
Learn by doing. I think having hands-on activities are very effective in learning UI/UX concepts. Although some rookies didn’t watch the flipped classroom videos, they were still able to catch up and produce thoughtful outputs. *Note: our class was divided into several groups to allow discussions and collaborations between rookies when doing hands-on activities.
Be aware of each rookie’s progress, especially during individual activities. Take a slower pace when teaching to make sure that everyone can catch up. Some rookies are shy, so we ought to be on the lookout to help rookies that are falling behind.
The classroom vibe depends on us. Teachers are the ones who control the flow and ambiance of their classes. It is crucial to radiate positivity and high energy to keep the rookies engaged. To be frank, this is the hardest part of all and we’re still figuring it out! It was overall a challenge to make the class lively and to avoid awkward phases during lessons.

Rookies’ internal discussion during the wireframing activity 📝

Observations on the rookies

Curious-minded. Although most of them learn at different paces, they all shared a common trait — which is being curious. They could easily discover certain features and learn how it works on their own.
Independent and initiative. Without being told to, they can already manage and delegate tasks among themselves in the group.
Mature. I was so surprised that everyone here was supportive and well-behaved. Despite the fact that they are still middle-high school girls, none of them are dominant in class and all showed great enthusiasm and respect towards each other.

💪 The team behind Winter Club

Aside from the amazing rookies we had, there was also the incredible team behind Winter Club that made everything possible ✨. Here are some inspiring traits from them:

Women dominated (obviously, that’s why it’s called Generation Girl 😋). No words can describe how awesome and hard-working these women are!
Always on the lookout for improvements. GenG team always attentively listens and is open to our concerns and suggestions regarding the classes and experiences we had. They act on our feedback quickly too! 🤍
Determined. It seems like most GenG staffs share a deep understanding of GenG’s purpose and mission. All the actions and suggestions they had were always ensured to align with GenG’s purpose. This dedication to serving GenG’s mission is what appalls me the most.

✨ Closing

All in all, I am so fulfilled and genuinely happy for all the rookies' projects and their individual growth 🤍. Huge thanks to my mentor, Alvin for leading the classes, and the super reliable volunteers, Gadis & Sandrine. Can’t get through the week without their help 🙌!