By the end of this study skills guide you should be better-able to:

• Accept that not all the lectures you attend will be brilliant
  
  
• Judge the usefulness (or otherwise) of various things you may do in lectures.
  
  
• Use technique for keeping your mind active in lectures.
  
  
• Make lecture notes which help you get started with the business of learning from lectures.
  
  

A lecture has been defined as follows: An event where the lecturer's notes are transferred to students' notebooks, without the content involving the minds of either students or lecturer! So, what sort of things do you think you might be doing during lectures?

• copying down what you see on the blackboard or screen.
  
  
• writing down what the lecturer says.
  
  
• writing down your own thoughts and ideas.
  
  
• asking the lecturer questions.
  
  
• asking yourself questions - writing them down so you can find out the answers later.
  
  
• answering questions posed by the lecturer.
  
  
• doing calculations, solving problems, and so on.
  
  
• yawning, shuffling, fidgeting, staring out of the window (if there is one), watching fellow students, chattering to them, muttering to yourself, and so on!
  
  
• looking at the lecturer, the blackboard, or screen.
  
  
• discussing ideas with fellow students, as a proper part of the lecture process, encouraged by the lecturer.

To some extent, which of these activities you engage in is up to the lecturer. However, there's still a lot you can do about it. What you write, what you think, what you decide is still very much in your control. Since the lecture situation is not ideal for teaching or learning, the more control you take over your own activities during lectures the better! A good way to start is for you to seriously consider the value of each of the various things you could find yourself doing during lectures. By ''value'' I mean two main things:

• making sure that what you take out of the lecture room will be as useful as possible to you in the future;
  
  
  
• trying to do a lot of thinking during the lecture, rather than leaving all the thinking to later - eg when you start to prepare for exams.
  

Now, I'm going to list those possible lecture activities again. This time I'd like you to make a decision about how active and useful it is regarding learning. Put a tick beside those which are active and useful, and a cross beside those which are passive or destructive. Then turn to my comments in the response to the activity at the end of the study skills guide - you may be surprised by some of them - but don't look till you've made your decisions about (a) to (j) in the following table.

Active/ Useful OR passive/ Destructive:

(a) copying down what you see on the blackboard or screen.

(b) writing down what the lecturer says.

(c) writing down your own thoughts and ideas.

(d) asking the lecturer questions.

(e) asking yourself questions - writing them down so you can find out the answers later on.

(f) answering questions posed by the lecturer.

(g) doing calculations, solving problems, and so on.

(h) yawning, shuffling, fidgeting, staring out of the window (if there is one), watching fellow students, chattering to them, muttering to yourself, and so on!

(i) looking at the lecturer, the blackboard, or screen.

(j) discussing ideas with fellow students, as a proper part of the lecture process, encouraged by the lecturer.

We looked above at the things that can happen in lectures. Most of these things tend to be under the control of the lecturer. However, there's quite a lot you can take control of. You may have noticed in my response to the last activity that a secret of successful lecture attendance is to focus on doing active and useful things (whatever the lecturer does!). You'll have some splendid lectures, with a bit of luck. Also, you'll have some rather dreadful ones. Sometimes the ''fault'' may seem to lie with the topic - every topic can't manage to be interesting to every student. Other times, the fault may be with the lecturer - they can't all be as good at lecturing as the best. Some lecturers may be extremely good at doing other things, such as research, and so on - yet be bad at lecturing. They may well realise this - or they may not! At times, the fault may actually be yours! You can't be on your top form all day every day. So, what can you do to make the most of lectures, good, bad and indifferent? It's not just a case of surviving them all, and coming out with reasonable lecture notes.

''What's this - I'm supposed to learn as well as take notes?'' you may be thinking. Well, it's very much in your own interest to actually start your learning during lectures. Let's explore why. Every week, you may be spending quite a few hours in lecture rooms. Already in your life you've spent a lot of hours in classrooms - whether recently at school - or a long time ago. Now think back. How much did you learn in classrooms? Or was it the case that most of your real learning took place later - with the notes you took out of the classrooms, perhaps? Can you remember looking at your notes, and more or less starting learning "from scratch"? How much of what actually happened in the classroom really stuck? May your time in the classroom have been more or less wasted? So, now, let's explore some things you can do to make your time in lectures valuable. Let's see how to make a start on learning your subjects while still in the lecture room, rather than having to sit down and start from scratch from your notes, days, weeks, even months later! It all boils down to: keeping yourself in decision-making mode. If you're in decision-making mode, you're automatically much more active than if you're merely passively taking down notes. Now, obviously you'll still be taking notes, so what sort of decisions about those notes can you be making as you do so? See if you can tell me. Try now Activity 2.

List below at least three kinds of decisions about your lecture notes that you can be making all the way through your lectures - decisions which will help pave the way towards efficient and successful learning of your subject material.

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But what if I'm so busy trying to make these decisions, that I miss something? A sensible fear. However, you don't have to do everything entirely on your own in lectures. You could collaborate with some friends and colleaguess. (Not too visibly or audibly of course - don't annoy your lecturers!) You could take turns: one of you writing down as much as possible of what was said, and shown, the rest experimenting with being active. After the lecture, you could compare notes, and catch up on anything you missed .

Do you make best use of your lectures? Lectures are one of your best chances to find out what's really expected of you. Lectures may be a direct chance to observe the people who may be setting your exam questions! If you make good use of lectures, your lecture notes will live up to the simple criteria below.

• contain all the important points from the lecture.
• distinguish between important things and other details.
• contain your own thoughts, questions, reactions.
• don't look like pages of a novel,
• are attractive to use.

So, over to you. Get some practice in. Try keeping yourself in decision-making mode in your lectures!

Activity responses:

Activity 1:

Now, read on to see how your reasons for your choices compare
with mine.

(a) ‘‘copying down what you see on the blackboard or screen’’:

I’d actually say this is passive! Obviously your pen may be active, but will your brain be active? It’s very easy to get into the mode of a human photocopier or a shorthand typist! You may be transcribing the proceedings beautifully, but how much is really going through your mind? If someone stopped you and asked ‘‘what were you writing about ten minutes ago?’’ would you be able to answer? (Ask any typist!)

Now obviously, you’ve got to spend quite a bit of your time in lectures copying things down, but there are ways of making this a more active process. We’ll explore these soon.

(b) ‘‘writing down what the lecturer says”:

Again this can easily be very passive. The reasons are very similar to those for (a) above. What if lecturers actually dictate notes for you to write? Few admit to such crimes (but many are guilty!) However, there are ways of keeping awake mentally even in such situations - we’ll explore these soon.

(c) “writing down your own thoughts and ideas”:

This is indeed an active and useful process. If you’ve got a lot of lectures, your ideas during one lecture will soon fade away as you go through more lectures. However, the moment you jot an idea of yours down, you’ve made a permanent record of it. You can follow it up at any time, even months later. So, don’t let your thoughts and ideas go to waste, store them, and exploit them. Writing your own ideas can help keep you awake and active even during the most boring lecture!

(d) ‘‘asking the lecturer questions”:

This is indeed active and useful. If you ask a question, you are automatically awake and thinking. However, you may not always feel able to ask questions. Some lecturers don’t seem to like interruptions. You may not wish to ask, in case you appear to be an idiot! However, for every question you ask, there will probably be several fellow-students who also need to know the answer. So what if you have a question, but not the courage to ask it? Well, there’s always (e) below.

(e) “asking yourself questions - writing them down so you can find out the answers later”:

This is of course active and useful. Once you have jotted down a question, you are able to follow it up, whether soon or later. If you hadn’t written down the question, after an hour or two you’d probably have entirely forgotten what the question was. Now, writing down your own questions doesn’t have to take a lot of time. You don’t need to risk missing something important while you jot down your question. For example, all you need do is put a big red question mark beside an underlined word or phrase, and that will be sufficient to remind you that you want to find out more about the idea concerned.

(f) “answering questions posed by the lecturer”:

Of course, this is active. At least it’s active as far as you are c o n c e rned. It may also be useful for other of your colleaguess. Some of them may also have needed to think of answers to the questions - though there is the danger that as soon as you start answering, they switch off and have a rest!

(g) “doing calculations, solving problems, and so on”:

Yes, these things are active processes. They are useful practice for things you may have to do later in exams, for example. In the lecture situation, at least you have the lecturer. There is the chance to ask for help if you get stuck - can’t do that in exams!

(h) “yawning, shuffling, fidgeting, staring out of the window (if there is one), watching fellow students, chattering to them, muttering to yourself, and so on!”

Obviously, these things are passive as far as learning is concerned. It’s very tempting to yawn and fidget if things get boring, but you’re not doing yourself any good really (apart from sending non-verbal signals to the lecturer - which may or may not be noticed!). Much better if you can find other ways of alleviating the boredom, - constructive ways, such as processing some of the ideas from the lecture into your own summary-notes.

(i) “looking at the lecturer, the blackboard, or screen”.

How much of what we look at do we remember? Some of us learn better by looking than listening. However, looking at things, or people, can be very passive. If you sit there, looking aware, alert, or even managing to look interested, the lecturer will think that he or she is making perfect sense. Most students manage to look “with it” even when they’re totally “without it’’.

(j) “discussing ideas with fellow students, as a proper part of the lecture process, encouraged by the lecturer”.

This can be a very useful kind of activity, if it is structured in the right way. Sadly, many lecturers seem to think that they should be the ones to be talking, and that other discussions may be a threat to their authority. Can’t they see that if the whole group is engaged in relevant little discussions for a few minutes at a time now and then, everyone is active and involved during these discussions?

Activity 2:

Now compare your list of decisions about notes with mine below. Congratulations if you thought of ones I haven’t! Make sure, however, that your list includes the ones I discuss below.

• Deciding what is important

In any lecture, there’s important stuff, and there’s padding! You don’t have to remember the padding. All you may need to do with background detail is to understand it when you see it - not remember it all. Perhaps in some lectures, the stuff you actually have to remember may be less than a quarter of the total content. Your best chance of deciding what is important is during each lecture. Imagine looking at full notes weeks later would you still be able to tell which things the lecturer was stressing? Not too easily!

• Deciding how to make important things look important

If you make this decision all the way through your note-taking, you’re investing strongly in your future learning. If when you glance at a page of notes, the important things immediately stand out, it’s far quicker and easier to learn those things. There are all sorts of ways of making important things stand out - choose the ones you like best. You can use different colours for main ideas or facts. You can put boxes round things. You can write “big”. You can highlight things with a fluore s c e n t highlighting pen (as I hope you may be doing in this study skills guide).

• Deciding what you need to find out more about

If something puzzles you during a lecture, make some kind of note about it - something that you can follow up later. If you don’t make a note about it, you’ll forget what was puzzling you. You will lose any chance of sorting it out.