Managing Student Questions with Piazza — Example Microbiology
Managing Student Questions with Piazza
Professor Timothy Paustian, Department of Bacteriology, UW-Madison, shares his example of using Piazza to manage student questions in a large class.
"When I started teaching in a large classroom, one of the significant time sinks was answering students' questions via Email. This created several problems. First, dozens of emails from students would come in each day, getting intermixed with other communications unrelated to the class. Second, the questions were redundant, and I answered similar questions repeatedly. Third, email is a limited form of communication, restricting file sizes, making it difficult to link to other resources, etc. The built-in discussion tool in Canvas is helpful in organizing students to work together or answer a single question, but it is not a great interface for general discussion.
The integration of Piazza into Canvas solved these problems. Piazza is a discussion board where students can post questions and get timely answers from you or your teaching team and other students. It has many nice features. By directing students to Piazza and out of my email, I was able to clear my inbox. Students can also post anonymously to Piazza, removing the fear of asking a 'dumb" question. There is a powerful and easy-to-use search interface and an ability to link back to previous posts, eliminating the need to re-answer a question. Finally, the tool has a rich interface allowing all sorts of media to be incorporated."
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Walkthrough
"Piazza is a powerful tool that can centralize and streamline communication in your course. It takes all students' questions and puts them in one central location. Students can search for answers, ask questions, and answer other students’ questions. At first, the interface for Piazza can seem intimidating, but once you understand how it works, it’s very easy to use. The video below goes through setting up and using Piazza."