Getting the most out of lectures

When I first attended the lecture here, I was about 10 minutes late. And when I rushed into the classroom, I felt myself wasn't really prepared for the lecture at all. I didn't bring my lecture notes, And ... I would not recommend that to you at all.

After I thought about what I did in my first lecture, I started to reflect myself a little bit. Then I realised the importance of getting prepared for your lecture. Then I started to read a little bit of the text and also go through the lecture slides before I really came to the classroom. Then I felt like I'm more settled in this case.

To prepare for lectures now I spend 10 minutes looking through the slides before I listen. This gives me an understanding of the structure of the lecture. So I know what to expect in advance.

Before the lectures, I briefly preview the slides and get the basic idea of the topic. Since I'm not a native English speaker, I also note down new vocabulary in the slide so that I can follow the lectures at a normal pace without looking up new words in the dictionary.

I seldom take long notes in text during the lectures because I found that it distracts my attention away from the lecture content. I usually focus on listening to the lecturers and try to digest the information they say. I simply use a marker to highlight the key points on the slides and sometimes use symbols to label and categorise them.

I used to just copy everything the lecturer said in my notes during lecture time, which was inefficient and time consuming because I was so focused on writing, but I wasn't really listening. Now, I only take quick notes in the lecture and complete the notes after the lecture with additional key points. With lecture recordings, this works even better. As you can always repeat small sections of the recording whenever you want to be clearer about the point and add new comments on your notes.

Also, I always use my own styles of note taking with different languages, abbreviations, symbols. For instance, in these notes, I have used Japanese and ancient Chinese characters, where they are shorter than English. And you can also try to design your own styles. Let's first have a look at what my engineering lecture notes look like. You can see here, I have a lot of numbers, symbols, diagrams, and process to calculate the problems. It is a good way that you keep pace with the lectures when you're taking down these notes. Also, I'm using highlighters to emphasise some key ideas and the process to solve these problems. You can see here, I'm also using brackets and different kinds of symbols to represent meaning. Also, some lecture slides give you some space that you can fill in. I would recommend you to make the space as your own version of lecture slides that you can fill information in between.

I always make my notes after the lectures, which takes the bulk of the time. I skim through the slides, focus on the highlighted parts, reorganise these pieces of information, get a full view of the topic, then construct the structure of the notes, and write it down on paper. I do this immediately after watching the lectures because my memory is still fresh and accurate at that time.

Different types of subject require different types of note taking strategies. For example, in my Maths subject, which is largely based on the formulas, I just annotate the key point and draw some graphs on the formula sheet. In my biology subject, which involves a lot of terminologies and requires rote learning, I use diagrams, mind maps, flow charts, and tables to gather the information together and build connections between each part to help me memorise the content. Also, I try to ask myself questions and pretend I'm the teacher to answer after classes. When I demonstrate content to a pretend student, my learning is more efficient because I discover what I still need to revise to be able to explain something. This technique works for me to review the lecture materials and deepen my understanding.

What I usually did after the lecture is that I will put it into my notes and then categorise it with my little tags here. Also, I will put some colorful pages between each of the topics. When I come back and review my lecture notes, it will be more convenient, and then I felt like this way is more organised and easier for you to review before your final exam. For more tips and resources, please search for academic skills, Unimelb.