Piazza

Piazza is an interactive online discussion forum tool designed to facilitate collaboration and engagement among students and instructors.

Launch Piazza

Piazza features

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

Piazza is similar to other Q&A forum solutions like Ed Discussion.

Artificial intelligence features

Folder Summarization

Folders with at least 5 posts will allow students to get a summary of what's inside the folders.  Folder Summarization is available, but disabled by default. The tool must be enabled by the instructor or the Stanford Canvas team.

Follow-up Summarization

Posts with 5 or more follow-up comments allow students to get a summary of what was discussed in the comments. Instructors can enable. Follow-up Summarization is available, but disabled by default.  The tool must be enabled by the instructor or the Stanford Canvas team. 

Access Piazza

All Stanford users can access Piazza with a Stanford.edu email address. Go to piazza.com/signup and click “Sign up”. Then search for “Stanford” in the School Search field and create your account. To learn more, see Piazza's Quick Start Guide (PDF).

To set up a course on Piazza: 

1. Navigate to piazza.com/signup 

2. Search for Stanford University 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 

Access Piazza in Canvas

Instructors interested in using 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.

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.

Questions?

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.