The ripple effect of positive change: Raising awareness of cyberbullying through a community-based service-learning project

Education scholars have recognized the current cohort of university students as the "always-connected generation" (Bull, 2010). As a result, selecting appropriate and yet targeted teaching tools for this generation is both "challenging our notion of a teaching environment" (p. 634) and raising questions about how to best "mitigate the negative impact of new technologies on learning" (Billsberry & Rollag, 2010, p. 635). One of the negative impacts that arise from the intersection of technology and education is cyberbullying. It is this extremely important and often difficult to predict element of online-based communications - cyberbullying - that serves as the focus of this chapter. The chapter is divided into three main sections. First, we present research regarding the prevalence, forms, and associated consequences of the mobile and online technologies being used by young people today. Second, we provide a definition of cyberbullying as well as a discussion of its pervasiveness and ways to address it. Finally, as a tool for moving forward with respect to the issue of addressing cyberbullying in university environments, we describe a university-based service-learning project aimed at increasing students' understanding of the variety of forms and the severe consequences of cyberbullying.