Aims: The requirements for revising the traditional education methods and utilization of new and active student-oriented learning methods have come into the scope of the educational systems long ago. Therefore, the new methods are being popular in different sciences including medical sciences. The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of teaching through three methods (group guided discovery, questions and answers, and lecture methods) on the learning level and information durability in the nursing students.

Instrument & Methods: In the semi-experimental study, 62 forth-semester nursing students of Nursing and Midwifery Faculty of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, who were passing the infectious course for the first time at the first semester of the academic year 2015-16, were studied. The subjects were selected via census method and randomly divided into three groups including group guided discovery, questions and answers, and lecture groups. The test was conducted before, immediately after, and one month after the conduction of the training program using a researcher-made questionnaire. Data was analyzed by SPSS 19 software using Chi-square test, one-way ANOVA, ANOVA with repeated observations, and LSD post-hoc test.

Findings: The mean score of the test conducted immediately after the training program in the lecture group was significantly lesser than guided discovery and question and answer groups (p<0.001). In addition, the mean score of the test conducted one month after the training program in guided discovery group was significantly higher than both question and answer (p=0.004) and lecture (p=0.001) groups.

Conclusion: Active educational methods lead to a higher level of the students’ participation in the educational issues and provided a background to enhance learning and for better information durability.