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Piazza

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Piazza is an intuitive platform that facilitates online Q&A discussions. 

Piazza enhances class-related communication

Piazza is a centralized place for instructors to conduct all class-related communication. With Piazza instructors can:

  • Answer students’ questions once for all students to see
  • Post class-related announcements, files, resources, and the class syllabus
  • Use polls to engage with students
  • Schedule class lock dates and times to have more control over posts while your class is locked
  • Send and receive private messages to and from students on more sensitive subject matters
  • Endorse students’ answers, letting other students know that the answer is approved
  • Monitor participation, identify top contributors, and adapt teaching strategies with Class Statistics
  • Allow students to participate anonymously
  • Use built-in LaTeX editor for code blocking and syntax highlighting
  • Edit questions and answers in a wiki-style format, enabling collaboration in a single space

Benefits of Piazza

Faculty report that Piazza saves them time. When students post their questions on Piazza, instructors or TAs respond to each unique question just once - instead of answering the same question multiple times over email.

Once a class becomes active on Piazza, students often contribute answers to each other's questions on their own. Instructors can endorse or correct a response posted by the community to give confidence that it’s backed by the teaching staff.

Students who would otherwise not actively participate or seek out help (be they too shy or geographically distant) can find their voice in the classroom and get the assistance they need through Piazza’s anonymous posting function, should instructors choose to enable it.

How to access Piazza

To set up your course on Piazza: 

  1. Navigate to piazza.com/signup 

  2. Search for your school in the School Search field 

  3. Enter your class name 

  4. Click the + Create a new Class button 

  5. Enter your course information 

  6. Click Create Class 

  7. Follow the prompts to add students and TAs
  8. Share the Piazza link with students 

Piazza Quick Start Guide

To learn more see Piazza's Quick Start Guide (PDF).

Piazza in Canvas

Instructors interested in making use of Piazza in their Canvas course should send an email request to canvashelp@stanford.edu.

The integration supports the following features.

  • Automatic Roster Sync—A daily sync of your Canvas roster with your Piazza roster. You can also manually sync the rosters at any time. Content in a single location: Students can access all their Canvas course content and Piazza Q&A all in one place.
  • Consolidation of content in a single location—Students can access all their Canvas course content and Piazza Q&A all in one place.

Get help

Visit Piazza's support website for support documentation and guides on using Piazza. Technical support questions related to Piazza should be directed to team@piazza.com.

For inquiries related to Stanford services, contact CanvasHelp@stanford.edu.