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Piazza - Overview (UW-Madison)

What is Piazza?

Piazza is a student-driven question and answer service that some instructors choose to use for their courses. Students can collaboratively work on answers by adding, modifying, or deleting content. Instructors can view students' questions and answers, post their own questions and answers, and endorse the best responses.

Piazza is operated and supported by a vendor. However, UW-Madison and Piazza have reached an agreement that provides protection for student and faculty data and intellectual property. For more information, contact policy@cio.wisc.edu.

Piazza can be used in conjunction with the Canvas learning management system.

How do I Access Piazza?

You can Access Piazza from Canvas.

How can I get help with Piazza?

The vendor provides support for Piazza and has user documentation available on their website at https://support.piazza.com/support/home.

You can also contact their technical support directly if you have a specific question.

FERPA Concerns and Best Practices

Due to some design oversights, instructors can inadvertently expose FERPA-protected student data in Piazza. To minimize the risk of inadvertent exposure of student data, we encourage you to follow these best practices.

Turn on and use an Access Code when you activate your Piazza course to ensure only your students will be able to access your Piazza course page.
Leave the instructor Self-Signup default to "disabled" so that no other instructor can join your Piazza page without your permission.
Periodically review your roster in Piazza to make sure only your students have access to your course's Piazza page.

Learn More

Read more about Piazza features, learn how to get started, see how to configure your Piazza class and more at https://support.piazza.com/support/home.