As education moves online, we have been receiving an influx of product suggestions to the Piazza platform to help bridge the gap between the in-person and virtual classroom for educators. In response, our team has been working to rapidly develop and deploy new features to make Piazza a more comprehensive learning tool. Here is what has been in the works:
Enhanced Locking Functionality for Classes
With classes moving online and instructors needing to administer online tests, we’ve added new capabilities for you to schedule class lock dates/times and to have more control over posts while your class is locked. Locking a course offers instructors more control over their class’s content during exam periods.
While your class is locked, you have the option to allow students to only post privately to instructors. This ensures that your students have a way to communicate with you while your class is locked, and minimizes any risk of sensitive content being posted to the class. You can always turn private posts into anonymized public posts.
Copy and paste images directly into a post
You can now seamlessly copy and paste images and other content directly into Piazza posts without losing formatting. You can even do so with keyboard shortcuts or drag and drop.
Live Q&A
Live Q&A is a dedicated space in your Piazza class for students to easily ask and upvote questions as you’re running your class, office hours, or any setup where you wish to monitor your students’ pulse in real-time. Live Q&A allows instructors to instantly see where students are struggling so that they can adjust their lesson or lecture accordingly, or follow up with supplemental materials after class.
Improved organization functionality
With the input of dozens of instructors, we’ve redesigned folders to better work for your needs. You are now able to more easily create, rename, reorder, and delete folders from your ‘Manage Class’ page. Changes you make will be pushed in real-time to your open Piazza tabs, making it seamless to add/edit/arrange folders from one tab while you are in the midst of creating a post in another tab.
Find a summary of our previously released product updates here.
We remain committed to making sure you have everything you need to keep your course running smoothly, no matter the setting. Should you need anything at all, please reach out to help@piazza.com. We’re happy to help.
Feel free to sign up for a demo or live office hours with the Piazza team at https://calendly.com/piazzasupport.
We are always looking for ways to further our mission of creating more inclusive and efficient learning spaces for all. Don’t hesitate to reach out to team@piazza.com with any suggestions or to let us know how we’re doing.
Stay up to date with other exciting features coming to the platform: Piazza Q&A updates.
