Piazza Q&A is an online discussion tool that allows students to post questions and collaborate to edit responses to these questions. Instructors can also answer questions, endorse student answers, and edit or delete any posted content.
You can now access Piazza Q & A directly from your Quercus courses.
Piazza consists of two products - Piazza Q&A and Piazza Network. Only the Piazza Q&A tool is supported by the University of Toronto. Piazza Network is packaged together with Piazza Q&A, and allows students and potential employers to connect outside of your course. The option to join the Piazza Network is presented to students when they create a Piazza account.
Please advise your students that Piazza Network is NOT required to complete their account set up or to participate in Piazza Q&A. Students can view our guide How to use Piazza in your Quercus Courses (Students) for additional information.
1. Enable Piazza in you Quercus course
To enable Piazza Q&A in your course and add a Piazza link to your course navigation:
- Go to Settings from your course navigation.
- Select the Navigation tab.
- Scroll down the list of apps until you see Piazza.
- Drag Piazza up from the bottom list of hidden navigation items to the top list of visible items. Place it where you would like it to appear in the course menu.
- Click Save at the bottom to save your changed settings.
2. Create your Piazza account
Selecting the Piazza item in the course navigation will bring you to the Piazza enrollment confirmation page. If you don’t already have an account with Piazza, the email confirmation area will invite you to confirm your email:
- Select continue to send a confirmation code to your email.
- Copy the code from the email.
- Return to Quercus and paste the code into the verification box.
- Select confirm to complete the verification
3. Create your Piazza course
To create a Piazza course:
- Select the Piazza link from your course navigation menu.
- To create a new class, verify the information for Class Name, Class Number, Term.
- To link to a class you've already created on Piazza, you can search for and associate your course to that Piazza Q&A.
4. Configure your Piazza course
4.1. Configure course settings
The next step is to configure your Piazza course settings. You don't need to complete most of the sections during your initial set-up. You can always come back and complete the set-up using the Manage Class tab.
For additional information on configuring your Piazza course, visit the Configure Your Class page from Piazza Support.
Students are automatically enrolled via your course roster
- You do not need to share a course URL/sign-up link or manually enroll instructors, TAs, or students into your course. All participants will be able to join through the Piazza menu item in your Quercus course navigation.
- There is an automatic roster sync between Piazza and Quercus. Students who are enrolled in the course will be added to the Piazza Q&A board automatically.
Piazza Network is not part of Piazza Q&A and students do not need to join Piazza Network in order to participate in your course Piazza Q&A.
4.2. Disable Piazza Network and Top Student Badge
After you have configured your course, consider going back into the settings via the Manage Class tab to disable the "Top Student badge" setting. This setting is not presented to you during the initial course creation process and needs to be accessed from the Manage Class tab.
5. Start using Piazza
Once your course is set up, you will see the following welcome screen when you select Piazza from your course navigation menu. For information on using Piazza in your course, visit Piazza Support.
