Equity, diversity, and inclusion in open educational resources: An interpretive description of students' perspectives

Abstract

Background: Although often assumed as objective, texts in nursing education are value-laden artifacts. Not unlike many educational materials, nursing texts are socially situated and often reflect dominant discourses of white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, cis/heteronormativity, gender binaries, and ableism. In addition to conveying what institutions and educators value, the discourses that are mediated through text socialize students in their ways of thinking and acting. There is a collective responsibility to critically examine how and why particular discourses persistently permeate texts used in nursing education. Open educational resources, as one type of text in nursing, are often touted as symbols of social justice because they are accessible for use by diverse learners and can be adapted to suit educators' needs.

Objectives: With a focus on better understanding how equity, diversity, and inclusion can inform the design and production of open education resources, our guiding research question was: How do students perceive and envision equity, diversity, and inclusion in nursing-related open educational resources?

Design: Guided by a social justice framework, we used interpretive description methodology informed by participatory action research values to answer this question.

Setting, participant and methods: Sixteen students participated from a post-secondary year-one nursing course in two focus groups and thirty-three students completed an open-ended survey.

Results: Data analysis yielded four themes: representation, learning, identities, and self.

Conclusion: Nurse educators have the opportunity to design open educational resources in ways that empower students and elevate social justice. Thus, a more nuanced and critical approach towards social justice is needed to better integrate diversity in nursing-related resources.

Keywords: Diversity; Equity; Inclusion; Nursing; Nursing education; Open educational resources; Social justice.