Problem

You want to expand your web content by drawing on the unique knowledge of your visitors.

Solution

Invite visitors to share information about highly specific questions, such as, “How has the habitat in your community changed over the years?”

Discussion

Incorporate into your site specific questions about which visitors might have personal knowledge. Although thought-provoking questions, such as “What kinds of food might be good to eat in zero-gravity?” are excellent teaching tools, in most instances questions should be purely rhetorical.

There are some questions, particularly those pertaining to health education issues and sociological issues, for which you may want specific answers from your site’s visitors. Surveys can be designed and tabulated for online viewing, or you can request that visitors email you with specific information. When utilizing the latter technique, be sure to inform users that their submissions may be published online and become the property of the web site.