Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56805
technology Committed to Collaboration A recent MBA discusses the importance of collabora- tion to learning—and the online social network she designed to bring students together. "IT TAKES A VILLAGE to raise a child," the saying goes. But Pooja Sankar believes it also takes a village to help students learn. That's why Sankar developed Piazza, an online social network and learning com- munity. She designed, tested, and launched the idea while still completing her MBA degree at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. With a name that means "public gathering place," Piazza promotes 24/7 collaboration among students and faculty. It offers students a more immediate way to "get unstuck" when they hit obstacles in their learning process, Sankar says. She felt the frustration of "being stuck" all too keenly during her time as one of only a handful of women in the undergraduate computer engi- neering program at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. "Most nights, I'd be up until 6 a.m. stuck on the nuances of the assignment," Sankar writes on Piazza's Web site. "Google was too general for my questions, as were discussion forums. I'd sit in a corner of the computer lab, too shy to ask the guys in my class. Pooja Sankar What was your vision? In 2009, I envisioned Piazza as a Q&A platform where students who were stuck could come to get unstuck. Today, we're used by more than 100,000 students in 1,000 classes. They spend an average of more than four hours a day on the platform. Students tell us, "I feel pulled into Piazza" because it's engag- ing, it's intuitive, and it's in real time. They don't have to ask two people a question, and when those two don't know, ask the next two people—they can ask everyone at once. What made you so passionate about this idea? In business school, I was in a finance class when I 54 March/April 2012 BizEd They'd all talk to one another, ask each other ques- tions, and learn a lot by working together. I missed out on this learning." In 2009, she tested her prototype for the platform in a single core business course at Stanford. She recently received US$6 million in venture capital, which will be used to expand Piazza's interactive features and reach out to more schools. Here, Sankar talks about her experience as a young MBA-turned-entrepreneur who is passionate about see- ing her big idea grow. She also offers business schools some insight on what students like her want from their MBA experience. When did you know you wanted to start a business? I was taking an entrepreneurship class during my first year at business school when I realized that I have an idea that I'm passionate about—helping students collaborate and learn better together. That's when I started thinking deeply about Piazza. I started developing a more concrete vision about what the Web site would look like and how students would interact on it. During the summer before my second year, I didn't take an internship. I just moved into my brother's home, since I didn't have any money, and I worked on Piazza by myself! I picked up a book on the Web design platform Ruby on Rails and built the first version.