During a class session in first half of 2013, one of my students Hasit Bhatt (10BCE109) informed me about Piazza-an online discussion forum and suggested me to have a look at it and to use it if applicable. I, with no knowledge about it, forgot this matter. After some time, during one programme at IIT Bombay, Prof Sudarshan informed all invited delegates to use Piazza for making it easy for students to discuss their doubts as a platform. Thereafter, I heard many people using Piazza in their conversations. I started exploring the website and got registered with it. This happened during summer vacation in 2013. I thought it was the best time for me to experience Piazza with a course in newly commencing semester. I created my class ” 2IT422 Data Engineering” on Piazza and advised students to enroll in the course.
My class started in July 2013 with around 70 students. I motivated students to join the forum. Not all, but a few registered with Piazza initially. I kept on pushing them to utilize this tool as a helper in sharing views of the class on various topics. Gradually, the involvement of students on Piazza increased and almost entire class started using it.
A BRIEF HISTORY
The story behind inception of Piazza is very interesting. One student from IIT, Pooja Sankar felt that it is always difficult and embarrassing for some students to raise questions and ask clarifications of doubts during the class (which may be due to fear factor or any other reason). To help such students, later, she developed this amazing tool and it is used by many prestigious universities globally.
I would like to highlight some features of Piazza which I found most useful.
- The instructor/teacher can post any important announcement here and all enrolled students can be automatically notified through email. In short, it may work as a group of users.
- Different threads can be created for a single topic discussion.
- If some student does not want to reveal his identity, then he may post his doubts anonymously.
- Posts can be moderated by the instructor.
- Posts can be categorized into customized folders based on their contents such as Homework, Lab, Assignments, Exam etc.
- One can upload file, video, image or link in the post.
- One can generate polls and collect information.
- LaTeX support is available!
- Users can also use private posts if they do not wish to send posts to all.
One can also see the class activity summary report. I have included the report for my class here.
Recently I came to know that now Android and iOS apps are also available for Piazza and as per my communication with their user support operations staff, they are planning to extend the services to Windows phones as well.
I congratulate all my students who actively took part in discussions and contributed to the community. Finally, I would like to end with a note that Piazza is really very useful utility for education domain and its benefit must be grabbed by all.
Just experience it once and then you will forget it never…!!
e SHM 