University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2019 Teaching Online and Cyberbullying: Examining Higher Education Cyberbullying Policies In The Florida State University System Joseph Raditch University of Central Florida Part of the Educational Leadership Commons, and the Higher Education Administration Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.edu This Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact STARS@ucf. STARS Citation Raditch, Joseph, "Teaching Online and Cyberbullying: Examining Higher Education Cyberbullying Policies In The Florida State University System" (2019).
Electronic Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/6726 TEACHING ONLINE AND CYBERBULLYING: EXPLORING HIGHER EDUCATION CYBERBULLYING POLICIES IN THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM by JOSEPH RADITCH B. University of Central Florida, 2007 M. University of Central Florida, 2012 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Higher Education in the College of Community Innovation and Education at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Fall Term 2019 Major Professor: Thomas Cox © 2019 Joseph Raditch ii ABSTRACT The cyberbullying phenomena has been recorded as affecting students and faculty alike in the K-12 and higher education systems. Cyberbullying in higher education has negative effects to the institution and its stakeholders, including faculty turn over and student suicide.
While these responses are highly publicized, the effects of cyberbullying on the online classroom remain relatively untouched by researchers. There are very few resources available to faculty who teach online courses for creating strategies to combat cyberbullying in that context. Furthermore, many states, including Florida, defer conduct policies and their enforcement to the individual institution. While there are many aspects of cyberbullying within the online course in higher education that remain unexplored by research, this study seeks to breach the subject by analyzing the policies at Florida public universities.
Using document analysis, this study analyzed policies from the 12 state universities capturing the definition of cyberbullying and recommended reporting practices for faculty on cyberbullying from each institution. By framing the results of the analysis through the community of inquiry, this study provides value to faculty seeking to strengthen their online teaching presence through providing clear guidelines established by each Florida institution. It will also provide value to administrators at institutions within the United States who are reviewing their policies addressing online abuse and cyberbullying by identifying to common definitions currently used within public institutions. iii For dad, Jonathan, Jessica and Lily.
iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my committee members: Dr. Cox for assuming the role of chair in the final hours of this process. Preston and Dr. Brown thank you for all the time you put into my education.
Marshall, thank you for joining the team and being delightfully insightful to the higher education process. A special thank you to Dr. King who guided the beginnings of this project and helped to mold this achievement. Next, I would like to thank my wife, Jessica, who endured this process with me.
You acted as my anchor, my sounding-board, and my therapist. Without you, this document would not exist. Thank you for taking this ride with me. I’d also like to thank my daughter, Lily.
You are the light of my life. Thanks also go to my mother, brother, and in-laws. Thank you for providing the space I needed to excel. Thank you for also enduring my long periods of brooding and silence.
To my dad, Robert, and best friend, Jonathan, who both expired too soon, I want to thank you for showing me how to look at the world in different ways. You both taught me how to approach problem solving through finesse, ingenuity, and, at times, brute force. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES. xii LIST OF TABLES.
xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. 1 Research on Cyberbullying. 4 Issues Defining Cyberbullying. 8 Statement of the Problem.
9 Significance of the Study. 11 Community of Inquiry Overview. 30 COI Debate and Limitations. 38 Definitions of Terms.
40 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. 42 Online Distance Education. 43 Definition and Description of Distance and Online Distance Education. 43 Online Distance Education Growth.
47 Computer-Mediated Communications and Online Communities. 47 Computer-Mediated Communications. 47 Social Identity Deindividuation Model. 59 Assumptions of Social Identity/Deindividuation.
61 Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effect Limitations. 67 Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Cyber-Harassment. 67 Bullies, Victims, and Bully-Victims. 71 Occurrences in Higher Education.
72 Cyberbullying Laws and Policies in K-12. 78 Cyberbullying Laws and Policies in Higher Education. 83 Conflict and Conflict Resolution. 84 vii Conflict Resolution.
94 Rationale for Qualitative Method. 95 Validity and Trustworthiness. 100 Inter-coder Reliability. 101 Rich, Thick Description.
102 Clarifying Biases and Reflexivity. 103 Role of the Researcher. 126 Inter-coder Process. 132 Limitations and Delimitations of the Study.
138 viii CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS. 141 Teaching Presence Themes. 142 Research Question 1 – Defining Cyberbullying. 143 Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University.
144 Florida Atlantic University. 146 Florida Gulf Coast University. 148 Florida International University. 150 Florida State University.
152 Florida Polytechnic University. 153 New College of Florida. 156 University of Florida. 157 University of Central Florida.
159 University of South Florida. 161 University of North Florida. 162 University West Florida. 165 Research Question 2 – Reporting and Responding.
166 Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University. 166 Florida Atlantic University. 167 ix Florida International University. 168 Florida Gulf Coast University.
170 Florida Polytechnic University. 172 Florida State University. 173 New College of Florida. 174 University of Central Florida.
176 University of Florida. 178 University of North Florida. 180 University of South Florida. 182 University of West Florida.
185 Research Questions 1A and 2A – Teaching Presence. 185 Inclusion in syllabus. 195 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION. 197 Discussion of Research Questions.
199 Research Question 1: Defining Cyberbullying. 199 x Research Question 2: Faculty Response and Reporting. 203 Research Question 1a and 2a: Teaching Presence. 207 Limitations and Delimitations of the Study.
215 Define or Include Examples Cyber-harassment or Cyberbullying. 216 Establish Additional Policies on Classroom Management. 216 Interlink Policies to Reinforce Teaching Presence. 217 Expand the Community of Inquiry.
221 APPENDIX A: CODING INSTRUMENT. 222 APPENDIX B: IRB NON-HUMAN DETERMINATION LETTER. 225 APPENDIX C: TABLE OF DOCUMENTS WITH REPORTING. 227 APPENDIX D: ALL REVIEWED POLICIES AND THEIR LOCATION.
230 APPENDIX E: SAMPLE OF RESEARCH JOURNAL. 244 APPENDIX E: SAMPLE OF REFLECTIVE JOURNAL. 249 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Community of Inquiry Model.
Cyberbullying affecting the educational experience. Practical Inquiry Model. Model of Strategic Conflict. Interaction of a Redirected policy with a Broad Harassment policy to form anti- cyberbullying language.
Contextual differences in defining harassment. Harassment reporting flow. Missing Puzzle piece concept. Proposed Community of Inquiry Onion Model.
219 xii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Sample of Data Collection Matrix. Aligning Target Data with Code Data. Research and Coding Question Matrix.
Teaching Presence and Coding Questions. Codes and Themes of Cyberbullying Definitions. Teaching Presence Elements and Matching Themes. Teaching Presence Themes Aligned to Conceptual Framework.
Frequency of Themes at Each Florida Public University. Florida Public Universities’ Information Technology Use policies. University documents with conduct expectations. 192 xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION General Background The repercussions of cyberbullying in higher education shocked the U.
population in 2010 when Tyler Clementi committed suicide after being secretly filmed by a roommate during a sexual encounter with another man at Rutgers (Parker, 2012; Pilkington, 2010). Dharun Ravi, Clementi’s roommate, had not only filmed Clementi’s encounters, but also streamed the live video feed to other students at Rutgers University. After Clementi’s death, Ravi was charged with and pled guilty to 15 counts of invasion of privacy (Cherelus, 2016). However, the convictions were overturned in 2016 by an appeals court (McGeehan, 2016).
Clementi's suicide began a public discussion about both cyberbullying and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues in higher education, specifically questioning the university's support for cyberbullied and LGBT students (Cherelus, 2016; Hubbard, 2013). After the incident, then-Rutgers’ President Richard McCormick (2010) released a public statement to reaffirm the university’s commitment to diversity and supporting the privacy of all students. While the statement focused on the greater need for additional LGBT support within the university’s community, McCormick (2010) encouraged the student body to participate in Project Civility, a 2-year program designed to explore the meaning of respect at Rutgers. While the project would cover aspects of civility, the “critically important issues of personal privacy and the responsible uses of technology” were highlighted as discussion topics (McCormick, 2010, para.
The web archive of Project Civility exhibited an October 29, 2010 “fireside chat” event titled 1 Technology and the Generation Gap: Multi-tasking, Misbehavior, and Misunderstanding, described as a discussion about the uses and misuses of technology in college life (Rutgers University, 2010). In the spring of 2017, Nick Lutz, a student at the University of Central Florida, was suspended after grading and subsequently tweeting his ex-girlfriend's apology letter following the dissolution of the relationship (Langly, 2017; Roll, 2017). The tweet of the graded message reportedly received over 121,000 re-tweets (Coleman, 2017; Roll, 2017). In March 2017, Lutz was informed that he might have violated the law, and university leaders called him to a Code of Conduct hearing (Coleman, 2017).
On July 6, Lutz was informed of his suspension for the summer 2017 term for being in violation of the school's Code of Conduct policy on disruption and bullying. The student's attorney, Jacob Stuart, fought the suspension citing the First Amendment, arguing that the institution leaders could not restrict speech that did not originate from campus or use campus resources for its dissemination (Langly, 2017). Stuart argued further that the decision would set precedence for the university leaders to sift through all student social media posts for content found objectionable (Roll, 2017). The university leaders reversed the decision to suspend Lutz in the summer of 2017 but retained the right to take additional corrective action if “appropriate charges are identified” (University of Central Florida, as cited in Roll, 2017, para.
Cyberbullying also impacts the classroom. In another 2017 cyberbullying incident, Marshall Polston, a student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, was accused of sending threatening emails to an adjunct world religion professor after 2 receiving a failing grade on an essay (Russon, 2017a). Polston and his world religion professor, Areej Zufari, both attended face-to-face class meetings since the beginning of the semester. According to Zufari, Polston would disrupt class sessions, make contradictions, and monopolize time (Russon, 2017a).
Outside of class, Polston reportedly sent emails to the professor accusing Zufari of being "anti-Christian" and threatening to expose her bias to the student’s "friends in the national media" (Russon, 2017a, para. Zufari submitted a report of the harassment incident to school administrators, as well as filed for a protection against stalking with Orange County. Another allegedly threatening email was sent to Zufari after she assigned Polston a 52 on an essay, which prompted the professor to cancel class out of fear and concern. An associate dean was dispatched to place a notice of cancellation for the class and took notice of Polston waiting.
After starting a conversation, the dean reported that he was uncomfortable with Polston’s behavior and continued generic references to guns (Russon, 2017a). However, Polston was not disciplined for his emails to Zufari. Rollins College president Grant Cornwell stated that the college leaders would not suspend a student for disagreeing with a professor (Russon, 2017a).