Lectures. A waste of time?

We do for some modules, but they have gaps in and you can only fill them in if you were there looking at the whiteboard.


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you guys dont get online notes? lol how poverty, I hate that unis are allowed to do that, also attendance sheets are scummy too.

damn it seems unis care more about attendance to lectures than actually helping the students achieve.

I think the best way to achieve in maths is to attend the lectures.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Online notes will miss a lot of material from lectures for maths. A lot tends to be written on the board and explained throughout the lectures.

Not necessarily, our online notes anyway are written by the people who take the lectures and are basically scripts of the lectures, the stuff that they write on boards or explain by talking is usually non examinable. Thats the way it should be imo if the unis want a high as pass rate as possible. Some of our lectures are even recorded which is excellent.

Yep, less than two months in and I've pretty much entirely stopped going to lectures. It's the second time I've been at uni though so I'm not worried about it, unlike all the newbies fresh out of Sixth Form who still haven't quite got their heads around the idea that you can choose what to attend according to how useful you find it/what other stuff you've got going on in your life.

Please expanxiate . What do you mean by you can choose what lectures to attend. Is it that you can observe the lectures then choose which ones to go to according to how useful you find them? Then shun the other lessons and have a bit more free time.

Well all the powerpoints for all the lectures are up on the e-learning environment already, so if I wanted I could look at them beforehand and work out which looked useful and/or which had least useful info on the actual slides (so that I could choose to go hear what was said in the presentation instead).

But what I actually mean is that I've been to the first three-ish lectures of each of the two different lecture series (Chemistry and Basic Human Biology) and found that I get virtually nothing out of the lectures that I don't get from just reading the textbooks, which I have to do anyway (we have some set books with relatively clear guidance on what we need to cover/be comfortable with, and there are tons of past papers up on the e-learning environment to check with). So I've basically stopped going to them.

By the same token, I've yet to turn up to a Chemistry group class. I just feel it's something I learn best on my own, with the book + online exercises. I go to both Basic Human Bio and Patient Contact class sessions though, because they're more interesting. I also go to Patient Contact lectures.

Should have researched the course before you went and made sure they actually teach you useful skills.

Same, also a biomed student.

In final year and finding lectures aren't worth the time it takes to go there. Second year, I probably slept through half of them (partly, bad sleeping pattern and very boring lectures), but that was also when I decided this whole uni thing isn't really worth what I'm paying for it. I don't learn anything in lectures, even the ones I'm awake for (which is all of them this year). Evidently others at this uni think the same judging by the attrition rate in attendance for every module I'm in. Most of the time lecturers just read off the slides for most of the lecture and for some reason insist on having 60 slides to fit into one hour/50 minutes. I have my laptop in every lecture, but I'm normally on the internet (When the WiFi is working. Uni somehow managed to break that), sometimes playing chess on my Macbook. One time I was even video editing in lecture to meet a release deadline.

Point is, I've found I don't learn anything by being in the actual lecture. The Listen Again service teaches me more and some times I can learn what they were trying to say in 5 minutes by searching online or just watching a video on it. I don't even buy the recommended textbooks anymore we literally never use them.
Anyone else feel the same?

Seriously???!? How can you not go to lectures?

When I was at Plymouth last year, I attended all the lectures I could, and all the seminars I could. Once, I was the only person in my classes seminar. (Yes, I had a one-on-one, 1 hour seminar, with the Professor, which could have gone on for a lot longer....)

Sure, I wasn't perfect. I'd missed a few, or I'd probably even fell asleep sometimes, but lectures have a place in the university degree program.

I'm a history student, so maybe it's different, but the more lectures the better. Someone worked it out, and well, assuming £9000 tuition fees, you could basically take £62 out of your wallet and burn it. Because, every time you don't go to a lecture, or a seminar, it cost that much.

Lectures are not the be all and end all, but, it's a good starting point.

This year, at Idaho State, we don't really have lectures, just classes (more like a seminar, but there's some elements of the lecture apparent). But, I've only missed one class this year so far (3/4 of the way through now) because I overslept. And I have had a bunch of 9.00am and 10.00am classes.

I've had my last ever lecture, and now, it's time to revise! But first, I need an excuse to buy pizza

when are your exams?

Oh no £62 burned of money you never had to waste 1 hour of your life listening to a professor read of the slides, time which could be spent you know actually learning something!
Seriously dude?