Do you think the Laughing Goat in the library is overpriced? Where’s the best Chinese food in Boulder? Which Boulder bars are the most fun? The Resolving Door Web site allows students to ask and answers all these questions.
Resolving Door is a Web site set up by CU’s Citizen Journalism class, taught by Daniel Schaefer, who is also the academic technology coordinator for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. According to the Resolving Door Web site, users are allowed to ask a question about a local problem, and receive an answer from another person in the community.
Schaefer said that Resolving Door is a new media effort that is meant to center around Boulder and CU. Schaefer said that is the purpose of Resolving Door is to give people a place to ask questions and receive multiple answers.
“It’s something where people in the community could enter an issue into the Web site, and leave with a resolution,” Schaefer said.
For example, Schaefer said he posted the question, “What’s the best spring break?”
Allison Foley, a junior media studies major, answered this question. Foley said on the site that CU Herd is sponsoring one possible inexpensive vacation.
“CU Herd is offering a super cheap trip to Las Vegas during spring break from March 21 to March 24,” Foley said.
Schaefer said that the Web site was funded by an $110,000 grant that Dean Paul Voakes received through the McCormick foundation. To be able to use the Web site, students must join online using their CU e-mail addresses.
Resolving Door is in phase three of its four-semester plan, Schaefer said. The first semester and summer after it were spent planning and making decisions about the creation of the Web site. The following two semesters were used to launch the site and get the site in working order.
“Building a Web site is like building a house,” Schaefer said. “The grant is the blueprint, and you have to take those blueprints and implement them.”
Starting March 9 at 3 p.m., the first 100 CU students in 48 hours who registered at Resolving Door and contributed 3 questions and 3 answers received a $10 Amazon gift card. Schaefer said that they were able to fund incentives while still staying within the parameters of the grant and that the use of Amazon gift cards greatly increased activity on the Web site. During the week of the incentive period, Schaefer said the Web site had 748 new visitors and 7,500 views total.
“It had a positive result,” Schaefer said. “Since then people are still going back to the Web site. It decreased a little after the incentive period ended, but its still at a higher number than before.”
Schaefer said that due to the success of the first incentive, the class plans to offer more incentives in the future.
“We want to start an incentive program that incorporates complete answers,” Schaefer said. “For example, if someone asks what the best bars in Boulder are, we want an answer from someone who has visited multiple bars, and has more than just an opinion on the matter.”
Keith Jacobsen, a 19-year-old sophomore environmental design major, said he had never heard of Resolving Door but he was interested in the idea.
“They should get it out there more,” Jacobsen said. “If more people from CU were on that Web site, there would be a lot of unique answers to questions.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Lindsay Mullineaux at Lindsay.mullineaux@colorado.edu.
