Comparison of Jigsaw and Traditional Teaching Methods on Learning and Motivation of Laboratory Science Students of North Khorasan University of Medical Sciences in Parasitology Course in 2022

Introduction: The jigsaw method of learning is a student-centered educational method, and one of its approaches is students' active participation in the class. Therefore, the present study aimed to compare teaching with two methods of jigsaw and lectures on the learning and motivation of laboratory science students in parasitology courses. Method: This study was carried out based on a cross-sectional descriptive-analytical design. In this study, 25 laboratory science students participated and were assigned to two groups: jigsaw and traditional. In each session, the teacher assigned a topic for each member of the jigsaw groups, and the students were given a week to study the topic. Thereafter, in the educational method of jigsaw, each student explained the presented material to other members. In the traditional method, each session was conducted by a teacher. At the end, the lecture and jigsaw groups were tested with the same questions and the scores of the two groups were compared. Results: In the examination of the difference between the total score in the jigsaw and lecture groups using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test, the mean and median of the total scores in the jigsaw method were higher than the traditional method, and this difference was statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. Conclusion: Considering the many names of the parasitology course, hard learning, and students' complaints about the amount of content in this course, jigsaw can be a suitable method for teaching this course.