Piazza’s New Licensing Model
Piazza announced that they changed their licensing model and that payment would be required to use Piazza’s premium features such as,
- polling,
- class lock out,
- and statistics.
You can still use Piazza’s basic features for free in your course. For more information or specific questions, contact [email protected].
You can read Piazza’s announcement at:
Piazza Q&A
Other Considerations
Depending on the instructional need, Microsoft Teams might be a viable solution that won’t require additional fees because of JHU’s existing license with Microsoft. The following document expresses the functional comparison between the two programs with considerations.
Piazza vs Teams Comparison (PDF)
Also consider Canvas’ innate Discussion Board tool. If you use polls in your class, you can also consider the iClicker Cloud solutions.
Piazza is an online platform that facilitates interaction among students as an alternative to Canvas discussion boards. It started as a way to help students who were stuck on homework problems get unstuck with the help of their classmates, TAs, and professors. Piazza is also FERPA-compliant.
Over time, with valuable feedback from thousands of instructors, the product has evolved to become a centralized place for instructors to conduct all class related communication:
- Answer students’ questions once for all students to see
- Students engage with classmates in online discussion
- Post class related announcements
- Post class files, resources and the class syllabus
- Conduct polls to get a sense of where students stand
- Receive/send private messages from/to students on more sensitive subject matters
Piazza also supports LaTeX for equation rendering and has code block styles. There is also a rich text editor that allows for embedding media such as image and videos.
Piazza can be integrated with Canvas. If you plan to use Piazza in your Canvas course site, please contact [email protected].