Promoting
Participation and Collaboration with Piazza
By Caitlin Stansell
How many times has a student come to class empty-handed the day an assignment is due with the explanation “I didn’t understand the instructions” or “I forgot that it was due today?” As teachers, we all struggle in this situation and wish there was a simple way to resolve these common issues. No matter how many times we read over the directions, provide daily reminders, and ask if there are any questions, students still run into problems when they are back at home without any way of communicating with their teachers. If students had an easy way of contacting us or another classmate to get any confusion resolved, we would not have to worry about students coming to class unprepared.
To solve this problem, teachers across the United States have begun using Facebook groups and Twitter feeds as a place where students and instructors can discuss upcoming assignments and answer any questions that arise outside of school. However, some have questioned the safety and security of these popular social networking sites. If only there was a website made specifically for student and teacher cooperation that revealed no personal, and potentially problematic, information. Look no further, because Piazza has arrived!
Free online collaboration technology tool and FERPA- compliant
www.piazza.com is already making waves and turning heads at the university
level, and it is only a matter of time before middle and high school teachers take notice of its benefits and introduce the site to their students. The designers of Piazza boast that it allows instructors to “save time” and “teach better.” With Piazza, teachers can create spaces online for their students to pose questions, share ideas, and work together to solve problems or complete assignments, thus allowing students to teach each other. As an added plus, teachers can monitor student discussions and add their two-cents as well if they see that their classes are struggling.
And Piazza is not only for getting student questions answered! Teachers can post a class syllabus, reminders about upcoming exams, and feedback from a particular lesson to engage the class
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and keep students thinking about the information discussed in the classroom. Students who are absent can use Piazza to ask colleagues and instructors what they missed and download any new assignment worksheets. Teachers can also post homework and due dates on their class pages.
While Facebook class groups and other popular social networking sites have their advantages in and out of the classroom, some districts do not allow their teachers to use these tools for educational purposes. Piazza provides a safe online place where students and teachers have all of the same benefits as any regular social networking site, plus more. Besides hosting a single space where all can collaborate to complete assignments and answer questions, Piazza allows instructors to post class handouts, project instructions, and links to YouTube videos,
journal articles, and other class-related material. Students will then always have this information available on the class page in case their hard copies are ever lost; this ultimately saves both time and paper.
A recent article in The New York Times (Rusli, 2011) showcased the collaborative website and discussed how its tools and capabilities give users a similar social networking feel as Facebook. The article also gives insight into the creative and imaginative mind of the originator of Piazza, Pooja (Nath) Sankar. After being released to the Stanford University student community in 2009, the site has now reached over 330 schools after being opened to all institutions in January 2011. Piazza has proved its popularity in a very short time; in less than two years, instructors and students across the country have discovered the benefits of this interactive online tool.
Consider this scenario: You assign a project to be completed with a group at home, but students complain that their different schedules do not allow them to all meet at the same time and place. This is another issue that teachers are fighting in today’s society; between afterschool jobs, sporting events, band
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