"Lip Service" or Action?: Student Perceptions of DEI in an Online MSW Program

Background and Purpose: Western New Mexico University (WNMU), a large online school of social work (SSW) at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), is preparing for its CSWE MSW reaffirmation. Our fully online MSW program serves hundreds of students nationally and internationally each semester. During this transition to CSWE EPAS 2022, our SSW is attempting to infuse anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) into every aspect of the explicit and implicit curriculum. In recognizing that social workers must be self-reflective and globally minded, our program incorporates the voices of students as stakeholders through evaluations of curriculum and instruction for ongoing quality control. The purpose of this study is to understand our students’ perceptions of ADEI, and to elicit in-depth feedback regarding potential and necessary areas for improvement.

Methods: An anonymous Qualtrics survey was sent through the Canvas online learning platform to all MSW students eliciting qualitative feedback on perceptions of ADEI in our implicit and explicit curricula. Sixty MSW student respondents completed the survey. A team of four researchers engaged in multi-level inductive thematic coding to determine themes. The team began with line-by-line open coding, followed by focused and family coding, and finally extracting three themes from the analysis. We performed cross-checks at each stage to improve intercoder reliability. We included quotes from the original surveys the demonstrated our themes particularly well.

Results: Three overarching themes emerged from the student responses: 1) taking a stronger stance; 2) cultural respect and sensitivity, and 3) lacking depth in addressing ADEI. In regards to taking a stronger stance, students felt that faculty and staff often did not directly address instances of bias and discrimination or facilitate discussions around such incidents. In regards to cultural respect and sensitivity, some students felt that faculty and staff taught and modeled the tenets of ADEI and approached students from a nonjudgmental stance. Other students felt that faculty and staff talked about ADEI, but failed to model it by challenging their own White, Christian, heteronormative standards. In regards to lacking depth, students felt that the curriculum could better reflect modern issues and provide more materials in areas such as dis/ability, religious diversity, non-Eurocentric frameworks, and intersectionality among others.

Conclusions and Implications: Ultimately, it is our goal to prepare our students to be lifelong learners who apply ADEI concepts to their own lives and their professional settings as they strive to improve the field of social work as a whole. The results of this survey highlight the need for our program to provide more inclusive class content and learning experiences, as well as the need to be more explicit about ADEI in our implicit curriculum. This feedback provides us with interesting and exciting challenges as we attempt to navigate making lasting and impactful improvements to our implicit and explicit curriculum in an online environment.