1. Lectures….and how to make them work for you
Hi. My name is Frances Dowson and I’m an Assistant in the Student Development department. A couple of points to note before we start…toilets are [ ], fire exits are [ ].
Today we’re looking at lectures and note-taking and exploring how we can make the lecture format work for you.
Frances Dowson
People Development

2. YOUR LECTURES What have lectures been like so far?
Are they different to your previous experience, eg at school?
Do you find it difficult to extract relevant information?
Do you struggle to take notes?
What are the problems?
So…how have you been finding your lectures and lecturers?
[group discussion]
Are you getting the information out that you need? How are you coping with taking notes…do lecturers go too fast or too slow?

3. WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?
“I find it really difficult to take notes in lectures as the lecturer goes too fast”
“I don’t bother with lectures any more. I didn’t understand what the lecturer was trying to say and so now I just download the PowerPoint presentation from Blackboard”
“I always take notes, but when I come to revise them, I find that I don’t understand them”
How can we overcome these difficulties?
Are these common problems for you?
If so, let’s have a look at how you can overcome these difficulties. If not, let’s think about how you could improve each lecture’s value when it comes to your assessments.

4. HOW CAN WE OVERCOME THESE DIFFICULTIES?
Preparation
Effective note-taking
Post-lecture review
Ask questions!
So….when looking at overcoming these difficulties, you need to do at least four things and we’ll examine these areas in detail.

5. PREPARATION To help you get the most out of the lecture:
Check the title and think about how the subject fits in to the syllabus
Think about how much you already know about the topic
If necessary, try to read around the subject beforehand
Try to work out what you want to gain from the lecture
Before each lecture, it would probably help you to know the title of the lecture you’re going to attend. That way, if you don’t have a clue about the subject, you’ve got time to read into it….even knowing the briefest outline of what is going to be covered can help you to understand the concepts and jargon introduced by the lecturer. It may also help you to know how the subject fits in to the syllabus and how relevant it is to your course.
If you know something about the topic, you could perhaps think about what you want to gain from the lecture….are there gaps in your knowledge that want filling?

6. DURING Survey Question Listen and take notes Recall Review
During the lecture, you can use a method developed by Blake & Bennett and known as SQL2R (survey, question, listen & take notes, recall and review).
Can you think of any phrases which might sum up what might be an introduction to a key point (ie something that you need to listen to and might need to make a note on)?
Brainstorm….

7. SURVEY Listen for signposting of important points: “I’ll begin by”
“Well…”
“The first of these….”
“One of the key questions”
“There are 3 main theories…”
“So now we’ve come to…”
“To sum up, what we’ve looked at so far…”
What makes you sit up and take notice in your lectures?
Listen for the signposts given by your lecturer of the main points. A few of these are shown here. These tend to indicate things that you should be making notes of.

8. QUESTION Asking for clarification:
“I’m afraid I didn’t follow your point. Could you please go over that again?”
“Could you go over what you said about…”
“Could you be more specific about…”
“Could you give an example of…”
“Sorry, could you speak a little louder, please?”
“Sorry, could you speak a little more slowly, please?”
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. These quotes should give you some idea as to how to ask questions of your lecturers without causing any offence.

9. NOTE TAKING What to include: Be selective:
Source (Lecturer / book) and date
Summaries
Illustrations / diagrams
Be selective:
What are the main points?
What is informative?
What is analytical?
What is the lecturer’s opinion?

10. NOTE TAKING Different styles: See attached handout Tape record
Annotate PowerPoint handouts
There are several different ways of making notes and the attached handout gives you details of a few that may help. You could also tape record the lecture, although you will still have to make notes afterwards, or you could annotate any PowerPoint handouts given to you.

11. POST-LECTURE REVIEW
Read through your notes again whilst they are fresh in your mind.
Are they comprehensible?
Anything you don’t understand?
Would it help to write them up?
File your notes away carefully!
Summaries
Read through your notes as soon as possible whilst they are still fresh in your mind. Will you still understand them when it comes to revising from them in the exams? One way of doing this if you have time is to go for a coffee with some fellow course members and try to recall and review the notes you’ve made whilst you can still remember most of what you’ve heard. This can be very fruitful as it is more enjoyable than going through everything on your own.
Was there anything covered that you don’t understand? As a group, or on your own, try to recall as much of the lecture as possible. Make up questions about the areas you can’t remember and then try to fill in the gaps by reviewing your notes. If there are pieces missing from your notes, don’t just leave it there, but either look it up in the library, or go and ask your tutor to explain it.
If you use a lot of shorthand, or were rushing to get the notes down so your handwriting is more of a scrawl, it may help to either type or write up your notes in a fuller form so that you’ve got a better idea of what was actually said, rather than trying to decipher what you’ve written when it comes to revision time!
FILING
When filing your notes away, you may wish to make sure that they stay together neatly in one file / place. It may help if you record details such as course title / lecture title / lecturer / date / page number so that you can track down what you need when it comes to revision time. This can also help you to avoid plagiarism.
One way of doing this is to write up a short 1 page summary to put at the front of each set of notes. Example in notes.
When you’ve got a series of lecture notes together, you may also find it useful to cross-reference these so that you work out which topics are relevant to other topics and where ideas / issues overlap.

12. ANY QUESTIONS?