Comparison of the effect of WebQuest and lecture on student's learning of electrocardiogram interpretation

Defects of instruction by traditional methods as well as worldwide technical advances have introduced new approaches to teaching and learning. WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of WebQuest and lecture on student's learning of electrocardiogram interpretation. Using a quasi-experimental design, 42 nursing students were allocated to examination and control groups by the stratified random sampling method equally. The educational content was consisted of the diagnosis and treatment of cardiac rhythm disturbances taught during four lecture sessions to the control group and in five stage's WebQuest activity to the experimental group. The learning outcomes in both groups were examined before and after the intervention and two weeks after the intervention. Data was analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics. There was no difference between the group's learning scores before the intervention (P>0.05). After the intervention, the scores of both groups increased. However, the scores of the students in the WebQuest group were higher than the students in the lecture group (P=0.022). Both the teaching methods resulted in improving student's knowledge, but the WebQuest method was more effective than the lecture method to the learning of nursing students. The results of this study can help nurse instructors to replace traditional teaching methods with new methods.