Piazza is a free online Course Communication system.  It  is an online platform that facilitates interaction among students and instructors in an efficient and intuitive manor.  It was started as a way to help students who were stuck on homework problems get unstuck with the help of their classmates, TAs and professors.

The list of what you can do in the is system is extensive

• • • • you can answer students’ questions once for all students to see
      • your students can engage with classmates in online discussion
      • you can post class related announcements
      • you can post class resources and the class syllabus
      • you can conduct polls to get a sense of where students stand
      • you can receive/send private messages from/to students on more sensitive subject matters.

One of the really great things about the system is that you can organize it by class.  Students are invited to the individual forms and can see all the classes they are  a part of with just a glance so it has a nice school wide application. The complete product information can be found on their site. I have  been using it in the online course I am doing with my AP Computer Science Students.  They have found it a valuable resource to get their questions answered.  As a math teacher one of the coolest features is the ability to embed equations using  LaTeX equation editor similar to this Visual editor that will created the LaTeX syntax for your.  It is a good find and according to them “Piazza is and will stay free to instructors and students. We started the company on the belief that nothing should come in the way of learning.”  They even have a FERPA guarantee “At Piazza, we take students’ privacy very seriously. Universities have veri?ed our compliance with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations, and we never sell students’ information to third parties.”  Let me know how this works out for you.

List of schools using Piazza