What is Civic Responsibility

This chapter explores five case studies to examine technology's impact on teaching, learning, and service. Each case study examined an online or hybrid course that primarily focused on community engagement through non-traditional methods, and in which students were responsible for creating knowledge in a way that would inform a community. Through this examination the chapter shows how what is known about civic engagement and citizenship is changing due to the fact that society is evolving and technology is being used in many ways to connect communities. By using Web 2.0 tools the learning environment encouraged individualized learning while still increasing the impact of learning beyond traditional boundaries of a brick and mortar institution. Finally, this chapter shows that by incorporating student-created projects using Web 2.0 tools it provided an overwhelming benefit to students in the form of self-empowerment. Students were able to develop personalized projects that positively impacted their communities.