Nursing Students and Teachers Knowledge, Application, Interest and Views towards the Use of New Active Teaching Methods in Nursing Education

Background: Students active participation in teaching-learning process is one of the basic issues in education. New teaching methods in nursing education have not been adequately investigated in Iran. This study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge, apply, interests and views of nursing students and teachers regarding new active learning methods. Methods: This descriptive study has been performed in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS). The questionnaire was designed by researcher, then its content validity and reliability were approved by experts (α =0.86). 202 nursing students and 19 teachers completed the questionnaire. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 16. Results: Among nursing students, the lowest level of knowledge about teaching methods was observed to be the problem-based learning(PBL,76.2%), and the highest was speech (57.9%) while teachers showed the minimal in conceptual map (31.6%), and the maximal in group discussion (94.7 %). In the nursing students idea, conceptual map and problem-based learning were used least (66.3%)while speech used mostly(75.7%). Teachers stated the minimal application rate of teaching methods for conceptual map (57.9%) and the maximal for discussion group (94.7%). Both students and teachers showed the least interest in the conceptual map (40.1% and 21.1% respectively) and the highest for group discussion (63.4% and 89.5% respectively). Nursing students selected the group discussion as their first priority of educational method (23.8%) while teachers put their top priority on the simulation method (21.1%). Conclusions: Since problem based learning was least acknowledged by MUMS nursing students, and regarding the least rate of usage for PBL and the conceptual map in MUMS, more attempts seems necessary to be made in learning these two methods besides other new methods of nursing education by nursing teachers of MUMS