Roy’s Ramblings: Student Engagement in Lectures

I am not sure how well known it is but you should be spending 10 hours per subject per week including lecture and class contact time. This begs the question what you do in this time?

 I have to say it always worries me when I see a row of smiling attentive faces – who are not writing. Sometimes I hear students say “but I record the lecture” (and remember you should ask permission from the lecturer to record) or even borrow their friends notes. The rationale for the lecture is to guide and articulate subject matter. You should not verbatim notes, but note critical points, and specific points you want to remember.

You need to internalise what you know in order to understand – and writing is an excellent way of doing this. I always make notes for another reason – it forces me to follow what is being said in a meeting, conference paper etc. In a world of the internet and tablets people forget that paper and pen is a technology – very flexible and interactive. This process helps you to engage with the content – the techniques and calculations that you are learning.

And finally remember that you should be learning ALL of the module and that the exam is an almost incidental test of what you know.

Never work to the exam. I did once and learnt my lesson. I got 62 for an exam but had only answered 3 out of 4. I just could not find another question to answer as I had looked at previous year’s exams and reckoned I knew what was coming up. The lecturer was cross – if I had revised the module I could easily have got a 75 he told me afterwards – and this mattered because there were only 4 exams per year – so in effect double weighted to what you are studying now. Never again……

If you need tips on effective note taking you can find resources here;http://library.soton.ac.uk/sash/learning-from-lectures