Generally, it depends on your course and lecturer.
I did biomedical science, and some lecturers would give out slides for you to annotate, some would give you slides afterwards (sans images) and others won't give you slides until the end of semester, but you always take detailed notes in the lecture.
We were then expected to do 3-4 hours work per lecture outside of lecture times, and extra reading was allocated to improve understanding and cover things that were not done in much detail.
We didn't get given any past exam papers, and could not access them at all so had to revise by making our own questions, group studying and using flash cards/lecture notes.
Personally, I found writing my (incredibly messy) lecture notes out neatly, adding the extra reading and diagrams, was the best way to stay on top of the work throughout the year, then started revising just before the easter holidays making up my own questions and going through everything (that I could) again. Our lectures didn't finish until 3 weeks before the exam, so it was really important to keep up with everything.