This is a short guide of some tips, ideas and random pieces of advice for those who are about to go to summer school lectures.
BEFORE THE LECTURE
Preview the material that will be presented.
Skim through your textbook, especially the chapter reviews and summaries. Get an overview of the course by getting a copy of the VCE study design and see how all the topics break down into subtopics. If you do this, you will more likely understand what is going on in the lecture, and put what the teacher is saying into perspective. Also, it will help you organize your note taking during the lecture.
Review the information from the previous lecture before going into the next one. This shouldn’t take too long but is a very worthwhile activity. Much of the material presented in the next lecture will be consequential. So if don’t understand something, make sure you clear it up by asking a friend, relative, or someone here!
Review learnt concepts relating to Year 12.
If you quickly go over the basic concepts you learnt in Year 10 or 11 then you will be able to keep up with the lecture. Many lectures are crammed with information. eg if you need some time to recall some chem formula you learnt in term 1, chances are that you might fall a little behind.
DURING THE LECTURE
Don’t waste time and effort by just listening to what the teacher is saying.
Do not go to a lecture like you are going to a film. I’ve been to lectures where people just flip through the notes and watch the lecturer like they’re watching a film or TV.
Sit in the middle to front of the lecture. You don’t have to sit in the front row. Sometimes its better to sit in the middle row unless you want neck pain from straining up to see the powerpoint presentation.
Avoid the back seats like the plague. People eat and drink and make all sorts of noises that will DISTRACT you and waste your money!
Take effective but concise notes.
Take notes! Don’t excuse yourself from writing ‘just because I have an excellent set of notes in front of me.’ The actual action of taking notes is helpful in remembering key ideas and processes.
Don’t just take notes when the teacher is speaking. Discussion time is just as important as when the teacher is explaining some idea. Some people might ask questions that might relate to you.
DO NOT COPY EVERYTHING WORD FOR WORD. You’re wasting your time. DON’T make exhaustive pages upon pages of notes. Use abbreviations and only write down what is important; i.e. the main idea and the supporting points.
Adopt a note taking technique. A good one that I suggest is the Cornell System (Google it). But it’s really up to you how you organise your note-taking. One thing to keep in mind is to keep some space after each topic or subtopic so you can add stuff later. See below for more details.
Give your notes some sort of structure. Highlight titles or write in capitals for headings and subtopics. Write different sections in different colours. As long you understand which topic starts and ends where, do whatever it takes.
When taking notes, try to have a questioning state of mind. I know it’s hard to think, write and listen at the same time but this part forces you to actively process the information. For eg: In a methods lecture, say you were being presented in a methods lecture how to find the stationary points when given an equation. Some questions could be Why is this important? How can this be tested? What rules and formulas do I have to remember in order to do this? Write these questions down if you have to. If the teacher doesn’t answer them during the lecture, ask them afterwards or during question time.
Research shows that you remember only 50% of what you read and hear. If you see, say, hear and do, this could go up to 90%. What does this mean? You need to be actively learning. Listening and copying is passive learning. Some examples of activities could be: drawing diagrams and flowcharts. Annotating and writing self-explanations on the set of lecture notes provided. Just make sure you’re not zoning out because of the teacher’s monotonous tone.
AFTER THE LECTURE
Review your notes. Within 24 hours, go over your notes and add comments to your notes such as explanations, examples you didn’t write down, some ideas that come to your mind.
Test yourself if you can remember most of what was presented. Educational research shows that you could forget between 20% and 50% of the information in 1 hour and up to 60% of the material within 24 hours.
If you have any questions, make sure you write them down! If you still have another lecture session to go, see if you ask the teacher during break time. If you’ve just had your last session, write it on a post it note and put it somewhere you won’t forget.
Create mirror and summary questions. Based on activities developed by critical thinking experts, these questions can help you reinforce key ideas and are a good way to see if remember the information later down the tack. Okay so what are mirror and summary questions?
Mirror questions are questions whose answers are directly in your notes. Ask yourself “If the notes I took were the answers in a test or exam, what would be the question.” As a guide have 3 to 4 questions per page. This is a really good exercise for maths and science subjects as when you begin to do practice tests and exams, you can use this information to analyse test questions to ‘predict’ the purpose of the question.
Summary questions. Theses are ‘overall questions’. Ask yourself what is one question that summarise the purpose of the information of today’s lecture. You may have two or three of these.
Later when you start school, go over the questions and see if you can answer them. If you can’t then go over the material again. If you can, then great!
If you adopt any of the above ideas, then you will have gained an advantage over all those other people attending these lectures. Of course, this is only a guide only and is provided to help you reflect upon what YOU can do to improve the benefits from a lecture. Everyone has their own learning style and you know yourself best!
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