The goal of the present study was to compare the performance of two groups of nursing undergraduate students, submitted to two different teaching methods, in their ability to perform the intramuscular injection on clients needing the procedure. Both, control (CG) and experimental group (EG) (n = 35 each) were submitted to traditional method and instructional method respectively, according to the methodological procedure described by Nogueira (1995). The performance of the students was evaluated by a nurse who had no knowledge of the group each student belong. The nurse used the "check-list" in order to evaluate the performance of student. The results indicate that the time spent by the students of each group was approximately the same i.e. 9.4 min for CG and 9.3 for EG. The students of the control group showed ordinary performance (42.9%), good performance (48.9%) and very good performance (8.5%) whereas those of the EG showed ordinary performance (5.7%), good performance (60%) and very good performance (34.3%). The present results shows that the students are responsible by their own learning, motivating us to use new teaching methods on nursing undergraduate course.