Once you’ve created your Piazza class, follow this guided setup to get your class started.
1. Confirming basic class information
To begin, fill out a few basic details. Add your course start date, then select whether you’d like instructor self-signup enabled or disabled. By default, instructor self-signup is disabled. If you’d like other instructors to self-enroll in your class, you can enable this setting.
2. Adding students and instructors to your class
You can add students and instructors to your class in three ways: sharing a signup link, pasting email addresses, or uploading a student roster as a CSV file. If you’re not ready to enroll your students just yet, you can add them later from the ‘Manage Class’ tab.
If you share your class signup link, students and instructors will be required to enter a valid school email address when signing up for your class.
If you prefer to have an additional level of control, you can add an access code. Students and instructors will be prompted to enter this access code when signing up for your class.
Alternatively, you can paste in student and instructor email addresses. You can add instructors’ email addresses and students’ email addresses here in any format. We will parse out the email addresses. Students and instructors will receive a welcome email.
If you have your student roster handy, you can also upload your roster as a CSV file, we’ll parse out the emails and your students will receive a welcome email.
3. Configuring your class Q&A settings
In this section, you can decide how you wish to set up your class Q&A.
If you would like to allow students to post anonymously from instructors (which can be a great way to elicit participation from the shy students), keep anonymous posting enabled. If you do not wish to allow students to post anonymously from instructors, disable this setting. Students can still choose to post anonymously from their classmates.
Note that you will always have the ability to ban individual students from posting, who may be abusing their anonymous posting privileges. You can do so via the Ban User Console that lives at the top of each post.
If you would like students to be able to add posts that are private only to instructors, enable private posts. If you prefer that students only be able to make public posts on Piazza (visible to their entire class), disable this setting. Note that you can always turn a private post into an anonymous public post if you think other students in your class can benefit from this post.
In addition to these two settings, you can configure additional class Q&A settings from your ‘Manage Class’ tab.
4. Configuring Class Folders
Folders are a great way to keep your class content organized. When students and instructors add a new post, they will be required to select at least one folder for their post. This makes it easier for other students to search these posts, reducing the number of duplicate questions asked in your class.
Here, you will see a set of default folders – homework 1 through homework 10, logistics, exam, so on. You can keep these default folders, or use the edit and/or delete actions to modify these default folders. You can create your own folders as well. Select the numbered checkbox if you wish to create multiple numbered folders like quiz 1, quiz 2, so on. Finally, you can reorder folders using the drag and drop icon so they appear in the order you like.
If you’re not ready to configure your class folders, you can do this step later from your ‘Manage Class’ tab. You can also modify your folders at any time from ‘Manage Class’.
5. Navigating between ‘Manage Class’, ‘Q&A’, ‘Resources’, ‘Statistics’
Piazza has four tabs in your top bar that we recommend familiarizing yourself with. ‘Q&A’ will be your primary place for discussion.
The ‘Manage Class’ tab is where you’ll be able to make any changes to settings you’ve configured on this page, in addition to selecting other preferences.
You can add class resources and announcements under your 'Resources' tab. View your students' participation as well as download an excel file of their participation stats from the 'Statistics' page.
6. Introducing Piazza to your students
We recommend adding a post to introduce Piazza to your students. Here, we’ve provided a template that you can use or edit.
We also recommend adding this blurb to your syllabus, which will help introduce Piazza to your students for class discussion.
7. Tips & tricks for a successful Piazza class
Once you’re done with setup, you will be taken to the Q&A tab of your Piazza class. There, navigate to your feed on the left where you’ll see a few default posts. Check out the ‘Tips & Tricks for a successful class’ default post to see how other professors have successfully introduced Piazza into their classes.
Finally, if you’re already familiar with Piazza and prefer to set up your class via the ‘Manage Class’ tab, you can “skip this setup” in the banner at the top of the page.
Our team is here to help! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] if you have any questions or need help getting started with your class!