Learning Tools

Community Learning Platform Adds Deeper LMS Integration

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/27/21

Piazza, an education technology company that develops a platform for community learning, has updated its application to give campus administrators more control over course creation and course sign-ups through the learning management system. The primary enhancements include integration of Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.3, the latest version, from the IMS Global Learning Consortium, and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) single sign-on (SSO).

The program serves as a Q&A platform for a course that allows students to pose questions and answers by name or anonymously, respond to polls and get feedback from their instructors. The software uses a wiki-style format that supports, code, mathematical notation, videos, images and other kinds of files. Faculty who use Piazza have reported that it eliminates e-mail clutter and compels higher student participation.

The upgrade provides for login management through LMSs, including Blackboard, Canvas, D2L's Brightspace, Moodle and Sakai, and course enrollments. According to the company, the LMS administrator will be able to:

• More easily provision and manage class creation and class enrollments on Piazza through the LMS;
• Enable single-sign-on with the university's identity provider;
• Do automatic roster synchronization between the LMS and Piazza; and
• Integrate Piazza's Gradebook functionality with the LMS, to port student participation statistics.

"As our university customers are continuing to simplify processes and navigate new learning models, we are thrilled to bring this protocol update that will allow university admins the ability to manage Piazza access directly through their LMS," said Pooja Sankar, Piazza's founder and CEO, in a press release.

The update is available to current institutional customers.