Studying

How to Get the Most Out of Your Lectures

How to Get the Most Out of Your Lectures
Lectures are designed for you to learn and ultimately, prepare you for your exam. Treat each lecture as a tutoring session for your final exam. Because, well, that’s essentially what it is! 

Follow these tips to retain as much as you can in your lectures and reduce your study time:

1. Hype yourself up about becoming a well-rounded student genius
Zoom out and realize that you’re at university to LEARN not to just get good grades! When else are you going to get the chance to learn about supply and demand if you’re not majoring in econ? Hype yourself up about becoming a well rounded student, and once the hype is there, you’ll find it easier to motivate yourself to study!

2. Your phone is the enemy
This is gonna hurt, but you gotta put your phone on do not disturb, and then in your backpack. Believe it or not, splitting your attention between Insta and PSYC 100 does not make for a good caption nor a good understanding of what B.F. Skinner’s all about. 

3. Handwrite. Your. Notes.
Your brain will prioritize writing down the important stuff instead of just mindlessly creating a transcript of what the prof says like you would on a laptop. According to researchers Mueller of Princeton and Oppenheimer of UCLA "Laptop notetakers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning."

4. Be a front row kid!
Okay, not necessarily FRONT row, per se. Sit somewhere where you know you won’t get distracted! Sitting in the back is less intimidating, but also makes you more prone to talk to your friend or accidentally start daydreaming. Students who sit near the front? You KNOW they go hard. In a study conducted by Perkins and Wieman where seats were randomly assigned to students at the beginning of a semester results showed the fraction of A's decreased as the seating location was further from the front, while the fraction of F's increased.

5. Don't copy down your notes word for word
Do not take notes on what slides say. You can always look back at them. Rather, take notes on what the prof literally says regarding the info on the slides. There’s no point in copying down a long quote from a slide if you don’t remember how the prof explained it. Psychology professors Dung Bui, Joel Myerson, and Sandra Hale at Washington University found that through actively summarizing and synthesizing key points learners will retain the information better over time.

6. Pay attention to seemingly irrelevant comments!
More specifically, pay attention to your professor’s comments that are along the lines of: “Oh, I love this particular event in European history.” Take note of your professor’s favourite study, and when studying for exam, review that specific study a little more than others. You can bet this will show up on the exam.

7. Trust yourself, and make the commitment to be a studious student 
At the end of the day, these are just strategies. They are here to complement your own effort to pay attention and take notes. Remember, it’s not a shortcut — it’s what comes AFTER you decide to commit to being an active lecture attendee. 


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