Adopting Open Educational Resources in a Nursing Informatics Course

Background Open educational resources (OERs) provide many benefits in nursing education, such as continuously updated course content and textbook cost savings. Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of OER adoption by analyzing final course grades (to measure student performance) and course evaluations (to measure student satisfaction) in an online nursing informatics course in an RN-BSN completion program. Methods This study used a quantitative, retrospective design to compare course grades and student course satisfaction between an OER-based (n = 70) and textbook-only (n = 73) nursing informatics course. Results A Mann-Whitney U test revealed a statistically significant difference in mean course grades (P = .03, r = 0.18) for the OER group. There were no differences in course satisfaction between the textbook and OER groups (P = .41, r = 0.18). Conclusion The results showed that courses designed with OER content can improve student performance in nursing informatics while maintaining course satisfaction.