As a result of the pandemic, Piazza made several changes to their product and business model; an additional set of changes is scheduled for August 1 (full details).
These changes have forced Duke and other institutions to review the long-term feasibility of continuing to offer Piazza as a university-wide tool. Based on feedback from faculty, a review of Piazza’s new terms of service and pricing models, and a review of the current landscape of alternative tools and technologies, Duke has decided to not continue with Piazza as a university-wide tool, though we’re pleased to offer two new alternatives.
To be clear, there are three options for instructors looking to use advanced discussion/Q&A tools like Piazza:
1. Use the free version of Piazza and/or pay for an individual class license
- The free version of piazza.com can still be used in classes with fewer than 25 students with technical support provided by Piazza.
- Individual faculty and departments may choose to purchase Piazza premium.
- Please note: the Piazza integration with Sakai and Kits will be removed prior to August 1. Rosters will need to be added manually to Piazza and users will no longer be able to login to Piazza automatically via Sakai or Kits.
2. Join the Ed Discussion pilot (available now!)
Ed Discussion is a new third-party tool tightly integrated with the Duke Sakai platform and offering full roster sync capability, Ed Discussion offers a wide variety of features and functionality and an intuitive user interface.
Many features like topic categorization and anonymous posting can be useful for teaching courses in any discipline, and equation and code editors are especially helpful for teaching courses with a science focus.
3. Sakai Conversations Beta: a new Sakai tool to better support class Q&A (Coming in August!)
Sakai Conversations is a new tool built by Learning Innovation and OIT to support the variety of conversations happening in your classes. Starting with Question & Answers, we’ve worked closely with Duke Faculty and TAs to design a tool that provides many of the features from Piazza, Ed Discussion, and other Q&A platforms. In 2022, we’re adding features to replace Sakai’s current Forums tool.
You can join the Sakai Conversations below.