Piazza (Q&A platform)

Piazza
Private
Industry Education, SaaS
Founded 2009
Headquarters Palo Alto, CA
Key people
Pooja Nath Sankar, CEO and Founder
Website http://www.piazza.com/

Piazza is a Q&A web service. It can be described as "mixture between a wiki and a forum"[1] that can be used with learning management systems.

History

Pooja Sankar created the first prototype of Piazza in 2009.[2][3] By February 2010, Piazza was used by approximately 600 Stanford students.[4] In January 2011, Piazza opened to all institutions, reaching over 330 schools and tens of thousands of students by the summer of the same year.[5][6]

While the service originally operated under the name 'Piazzza',[7] in June 2011, the third 'z' was dropped from Piazza's name.[8]

Funding

Service

Users can publicly (and anonymously, if the head instructor allows it) ask questions, answer questions, and post notes. Each question prompts a collective answer to which any user can contribute and an instructor answer, shown directly below, which can only be edited by instructors. Users are allowed to attach external files to posts, use LaTeX formatting, view a post's edit history, add follow-up questions, and receive email notifications when new content is added. The interface consists of a dynamic list of posts on the left side of the screen, a central panel for viewing and contributing to individual posts, and an upper bar for account control.[9] According to the company's data, the average Piazza question is answered within 14 minutes.[10]

Individual Piazza classes are self-contained and can be locked with an access code. Anyone may create a class, but the head instructor retains full control over the class content, along with administrative abilities such as endorsing good answers and viewing more detailed statistics on class activity.[11]

The Piazza team is based in Palo Alto, California.[12]

See also

References

  1. Kincaid, Jason (5 February 2010). "Piazzza Gives Classmates An Online Forum To Trade Their Knowledge". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  2. "Piazzza - a new Q&A tool (free for academic purposes)". Seminars & Colloquia in Computer Science. NCSU Dept. of Computer Science. 20 April 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  3. Rusli, Evelyn M. (3 July 2011). "Homework Help Site Has a Social Networking Twist". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
  4. Kincaid, Jason (5 February 2010). "Piazzza Gives Classmates An Online Forum To Trade Their Knowledge". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  5. "Piazzza - a new Q&A tool (free for academic purposes)". Seminars & Colloquia in Computer Science. NCSU Dept. of Computer Science. 20 April 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  6. Rusli, Evelyn M. (3 July 2011). "Homework Help Site Has a Social Networking Twist". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
  7. "Wayback Machine - piazzza.com". Internet Archive. Archived from the original on February 7, 2011. Retrieved 10 November 2014.
  8. Griffith, Terri (30 June 2011). "What happens when students create their own collaboration tools?". GigaOm. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  9. "Piazza Tutorial Class". Piazza Technologies, Inc. 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  10. Rusli, Evelyn M. (3 July 2011). "Homework Help Site Has a Social Networking Twist". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
  11. "Instructor FAQ Class". Piazza Technologies, Inc. 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
  12. "Piazza Privacy Policy". Piazza Technologies, Inc. 29 May 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2011.
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