Professor Gareth Denyer on Piazza in COVID Lockdown

Gareth Denyer, Professor of Biochemical Education at the University of Sydney, offers insights on how he and his staff are leaning on Piazza to connect with students and teaching teams during the COVID crisis.

Message Consistency and Quick Response Times

There’s nothing worse than students getting different messages from different people and so it is really fantastic, not only as the coordinator to make sure the message is consistent, but to make sure all my staff see what messages are going out.

Between our entire teaching team, we can deal with Piazza posts with a less than 10 minute turn around, which is incredible in comparison to what would be achievable if the students were giving us emails. This is really important in this emergency because systems are strained, and things are sometimes buckling under the strain. Being able to have this central place where students can say “is this just me” or “is this an outage,” saves them a lot of angst, but it also saves us coordinators a tremendous amount of having to reply and assuage concerns.

Gathering as a Community During Times of Stress

It is really useful for our overseas students to know that we still love them and that we still care about them, and that they are part of a community that can now interact on Piazza, as well as with our other platforms. Piazza binds the students together and actually allows the students themselves to gather as a community. The biggest challenge is making sure that the whole class is corralled and interacting. See who is engaged and send them reminders to get them to come in.

In this time of stress, students are panicked, and they’re worried about their degrees. Their way of communication can be intemperate, and us being able to counsel them on Piazza about how they are raising their communications is extremely helpful, not just for them and their personal development, but also for the other students to see as well and learn by example.

We will continue to share tidbits from instructors on how you can stay connected. If you have your own insights, email us at team@piazza.com and we’ll work to share it with the world.