University Lectures

Hey, guys!
In this blog post I would like to go over one of the most important parts of university learning - lectures. Each post-secondary institution is different and your lectures might or might not go similar to mine, but see if you can relate.

My lectures are 50 minutes in duration and each course gets 2 lectures per week (for some courses it's 3) + labs and tutorials (but we are not focusing on those).
Initially I thought that the lectures will be the place where the heaviest amount of material is presented, like in high school. It is definitely not the case. I will outline the way lectures go in each subject and then I'll give you some tips for what to do to learn effective from my lecture material.

Physics:

• daily pop-up quizzes
• lecture outlines the online module (primary source of information)
• extended (from the module) examples are performed

Chemistry:

• daily pop-up quizzes
• lecture covers simple and extended examples and application of the theory, but no outline of the actual theory
• the teacher often stresses about concepts important for the exam

Psychology:

• daily pop-up quizzes and polls
• lecture covers application questions extended from the module and new information (something found in textbook, but not in modules)

Health, Aging, and Society:

• discussions of in-class (not-for-marks) questions
• lecture covers 60-80% of the information in the textbook (no online modules in this class)
• the teacher often stresses the concepts important for the exams

Biology:

• the first lecture(out of the 2) outlines online modules
• the second lecture brings in application from the information learned in modules
• pop-up quizzes occasionally 

So this is how the lectures go. I will outline what to do before, during, and after lectures, and feel free to accept these tips even if you have a different format of questions because it'll work anyway.

Before:

• read the textbook and watch online modules
• take outline (detailed) notes 
• you should pay attention to objectives of the material to use them as your guide to most important info to focus on
• prepare any questions for your TA or prof for the lecture

During:

• take notes!
• always note if the professor talks about a "good test question"
• ask questions

After:

• reread your outline and lecture notes and study them (highlight, create e-flashcards, etc.)
• do the questions from the textbook and/or any other resources provided (online quizzes, tutorial questions)
• prepare any questions for your TA or prof for the next lecture

If you will get into a habit of doing all of that, you will see how helpful it will be! I personally did not do that in the first month of uni, and now, I'm spending time doing all of that during my reading week. So start right!

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