Iranian Journal of Medical Education

Introduction: Several studies have compared lecturing and group discussion and reported conflicting results. Due to the role of review studies in preparing reliable research evidence, this review study aimed to compare the effectiveness of lecture and group discussion methods on the learning of medical sciences students.

Methods: A review study was conducted. Articles were searched through SID, IranMedex, Magiran, PubMed, Science Direct and Google scholar databases. Searching of original articles published from 2000 to 2015 was performed using English key words of teaching, small group discussion, lecture, discussion, student centered and equivalent Farsi keywords. Initially, 65 papers were found and finally 15 articles related to the issue were included in the final review.

Results: All studies had compared lecturing and group discussion, but they had different designs. In all studies, students’ scores were used as learning criterion. In nine studies, the students received higher scores through group discussion than in lecture method. Only in one study, lecturing resulted in better scores and in three studies, no difference was found between the two methods. Four studies also assessed the students’ satisfaction and in three other studies, more satisfaction was reported in group discussion method.

Conclusion: Group discussion seemed to result in better learning than the lecture method. Therefore, this method can be used in combination with lecture method to increase the students` learning.