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 Cources (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
The first time you access Piazza you will be prompted to create an account. Once Piazza is activated in your course:
- Select the Piazza link from your navigation menu to open the Piazza course registration page.
- Follow the instructions to create your account.
3. Create your Piazza course
To create a Piazza course:
- Select the Piazza link from your navigation menu.
- To create a new class, verify the information for Class Name, Class Number, Term. Then, enter an estimate for the number of students in your course.
- 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
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.
One item to consider when configuring your Piazza course is creating an Access Code for your course and sharing this with your students in your syllabus or another location in your course (e.g., a Quercus Announcement, Page, or Inbox message). An Access Code will allow you to limit the Piazza Q&A Board for your course to those who know the code. Otherwise, anyone with a U of T email account could join your course through the main Piazza website.
Enrolling students and instructors and sharing your course sign-up link
- 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 no automatic roster sync between Piazza and Quercus. Only students who have joined the course will be added to the Piazza Q&A board for your course.
- If you have chosen to use a course access code, students will need to enter this code to get into your Piazza course the first time they join your course. They will only need to do this once.
Disable Piazza Network Settings
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.
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.
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.
