How to deal with lecture based classes with loads of detail?

[Genecks]

---

Members do not see this ad.

note: I put an update at the end of my post; maybe more will follow.

Hey, people.

I find myself at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) dealing with a lot of lecture-based classes. This wouldn't be such a problem if I could instantly memorize things upon being told them. However, I've never been much of a person who learns from listening (I'm more of a reader, and like being such because it's easier to undergo repetitive learning with a book than a lecture).

I find going through lectures, writing everything down on notes, handout slides, and more to be extremely time consuming. I've been able to bring down the amount of time listening to a lecture and distilling all of its contents to about three hours. And that's a lot of time, really, for about a 50 minute lecture. It takes me about three hours to distill everything out of a biology course lecture: I review the recordings when I come back to my apartment.

I don't find myself encountering the same issue in philosophy classes, psychology classes, and economic classes. This issue seems to be in particular biology course specific. Has anyone noticed this kind of pattern/issue with biology courses? How they seem to cover a lot more detail that other social science and humanities courses? That there appears to be more need to pay attention to everything said in biology courses because it's not easy to review the material unlike other non-science courses?

Does anyone have some advice as to how I can do better?

I can try taking better notes, but because the lectures move real fast, it's difficult to write notes, pay attention to the next thing being said, and then take notes on that thing, too. I've tried using my laptop to take notes, but that doesn't work the best when the professor is discussing unlabeled anatomical aspects of the human brain: There is a need to label things and look at him talking at the same time (serious multitasking going on).

I often feel that I would be better off if I just set my recorder in the front of the class, sat in the back, and then worked on homework or some other class material, only to review the lectures and distill it at a later time. Even better would be if I bought a video camera unit, set it up on my desk, pointed it at the projector, and reviewed all of that at a later time. I once saw a student do this. He had been quite a successful student because of such. Maybe I should fork out the $300 for a video unit?

I've exhausted almost all of my choices except the video recorder and sitting in the back of the room.
To do such would seem extremely rude but very economical.

Thanks for reading. 👍

Sincerely,
Genecks.

UPDATE: I'm a senior at UIC, and a biology major.

 

[Lunasly]

Hey Genecks,

I am not sure what year you are in, but I am a freshman and I was in the exact same position as you. At the beginning of the year when the prof went through all of the slides I found it really hard to keep up and write down everything and when I got home I forgot most of what was said and I'd have to go back and review all over again. It also took me 3 hours because I'd write out every single detail that was on his slides on to paper in different colours and it just didn't help.

I talked to him, and while we don't have to remember everything single detail (i.e. every single enzyme used in photosynthesis because anyone can open up a book and find out what enzyme is used at that point), but to get the main concepts out of it.

So what I did is to get a better understanding is that I realised while I was in class, when he spoke, not only did i have to listen, but I had to understand what was being said. So if I had a better understanding of the topic before he lectured it, all I'd have to do is listen and take notes on the important things rather than every single detail.

What I do now and what has been working for me is that I read the textbook beforehand. My biology class runs every second day of the week twice a week so I'd split up the reading. On my laptop I write notes based on the important concepts in the book in short hand to keep everything clean.

Then I go to class, listen to the lecture, and write down only the important details which I can add to my notes on my computer over the weekend to finalize everything. What i found is instead of having 7 pages of notes from writing in class; I only had 3 - 4 summarized notes which I can understand because I wrote them in my own words.

Hope things work out for you!

 

[Genecks]

Hi, there.

I'm a senior at UIC.

And I do understand what you mean. For instance a developmental biology book may go over many pathways, developmental genes, and more. However, lectures can be a way of knowing what is expected of me. And I've learned that lectures narrow down what I need to study.

Despite that, however, for this 400-level course that I'm in, it would appear that we don't really use the book anymore. We don't really even go off the syllabus, and what is described to be done that week isn't really what was on the syllabus. So, a person has to adapt to what happens in class and use what happened in class as what to study.

I feel there is almost little to know way to study except to listen and transcribe the lecture. The syllabus, however, did say that exams would be lecture-based. Nonetheless, it has been a serious pain studying for that course.

Thank you for telling me that it takes you about three hours to review, though. That means a lot to me. I don't have a lot of people to compare with.

So, should I just find it common to review lectures from now on? To assume that my new study materials as a more advanced college student would be lecture-based materials? As such, should I be focusing on reviewing the lecture materials, transcribing them, and distilling them from now on?

For the developmental biology course I was taking, I was reading the book until I came to understand that it wasn't necessary. I mean, if you read developmental biology by gilbert, you'll notice there is a bunch of detail in later chapters. At least at UIC, I have come to understand there isn't a need to read the book: A person can get an 'A' and get away with transcribing and listening to lectures, albeit it is time consuming.

And if I were to rely on the book, I'd be attempting to memorize and understand everything. UIC courses seem to focus on a lecture-style of learning, which I've been coming to understand more in my senior year (I transfered in from a community college after taking a year off; so I was a bit rusty to adapt at first).

I don't know if this lecture-based study is common in other universities, though. I don't quite recall it being very popular at the community college level.

I surely remember courses, such as microbiology, at the community college level that were lecture-based. However, we drew everything, and barely anything was mentioned that I could not infer from my notes or what was presented on the board. It feels as though colleges and universities like to use powerpoints these days, so a powerpoint without much detail on it will end-up forcing a student to review an entire lecture, because the detail now exists in the recording rather than what was in the notes.

 

[Lunasly]

Ah a 400-level class. O_O

Well I am talking about 100-level biology lol and I'd say to read the chapter at a good pace, write down what I think is important takes me about 2 - 3 hours. The only way I have ever achieved an A in any class is through hard work as I am not one of those guys who can hear something once and remember it until exam time.

Well it seems the book is out of the question. If he posts his notes online, you can download them and make notes based on what's important as I am sure the notes might be repetitive at some points.

Then you can go to class, write down what you feel you should add (i.e. he explains something you didn't quite understand the first time you read it).

I guess the point I am trying to get at is I think things would be a lot easier for you if you were to have some background knowledge about the topic before attending the lecture. This is just a piece of advice some of the 3rd and 4th year students at my school gave me and it has worked thus far. The way you decide to obtain that information beforehand will depend on your situation. For me, its reading the chapter, for you may be reading and writing down notes based on his lecture notes.

If they don't post them online, I am sure you can ask him and they wouldn't mind.

Sorry if I was not of much help.

 

[gamerstud77]

I don't recommend using a recorder. I tried that whole thing. It will take more time trying to distill a recorded lecture than written notes.

How do you distill your notes? I know some people insist on re-writing every word posted. It would be more beneficial to think of a creative way to structure that information. i.e. Make a flow chart etc. Should cut down on the bulk of your time.

Also, I have never been one of those people that spends time everyday making review sheets, but there is something to be said about taking some extra time at the end of the week to do so.... by the time the test roles around all you have to do is review what you already made. Hope this helps.

 

[FIREitUP]

One thing I can suggest is to read over the chapter in the textbook before class to familiarize yourself with the material. That way you won't be so overwhelmed when all this new information is presented to you at once.

 

[mtbtx]

tl;dr

Study more!!!!

 

[oldyogurt]

keep recording the lectures and learn to play that bad boy at 1.5x speed and pause as necessary. I'm about to pop in a video lecture at 2.0x speed right now. my ears used to be terrible (i'm a visual thinker) but just adapt and excel my friend.

the in person lecture just gets your feet wet with the material, the meat of the learning is done at home with VLC media player where you can control the pacing.

 

[Genecks]

I don't recommend using a recorder. I tried that whole thing. It will take more time trying to distill a recorded lecture than written notes.

How do you distill your notes? ...

Well, what I typically do is take notes to the best of my ability, which often comes out short when the professor rarely stops to take a breath. Lectures seem like a data dump from professor to student.

So, what happens is that I'll take my recordings and slide handouts to my apartment, listen to the recording on my laptop, and attempt to go through each slide while writing down important details.

For instance, if there is something on the slide I couldn't figure out on my own, I'll write that down. Furthermore, I understand that it's just plain time consuming to transcribe every single thing, so I'll attempt to listen to what is being said, summarize it, and then write it in the slide margins. Nonetheless, this process is still time consuming. Sometimes I can't help but write the entire thing of what is said, because professors will use qualifiers in their statements, such as "may," "not always," and so forth. I learned the hard way to take note to these qualifiers, as I once encountered many questions and statements on a cell biology exam (200-level) that used qualifiers. So, I take them serious these days.

keep recording the lectures and learn to play that bad boy at 1.5x speed and pause as necessary. I'm about to pop in a video lecture at 2.0x speed right now. my ears used to be terrible (i'm a visual thinker) but just adapt and excel my friend.

the in person lecture just gets your feet wet with the material, the meat of the learning is done at home with VLC media player where you can control the pacing.

Yeah, I was using VLC the past while. 👍

I think part of it has to do with making the neuronal connections to establish auditory learning. I never had to do as much of that at a community college as I have at a university. Most of my life I've come across babbling idiots, so having to learn via audition has been a life-changing experience.

Most of my life I've primarily made neuronal connections due to visual learning. I've been told that it has been the past six years or so people have more and more used powerpoints. I never grew up with powerpoint learning, so maybe I'm a slightly different generation unlike people a couple of years younger than I.

Thank you, oldyogurt, for reminding me that most of the learning occurs outside of the classroom.

 

[oldyogurt]

No problem dude, I hear what you're saying though. I've got one professor that my friend said "talks like an auctioneer". He talks super fast and for the first few lectures I had to repeat the recordings multiple times to catch everything. I kind of got used to his style though by now.

 

[bucks2010]

I'm assuming this class meets 2-3x/wk. giving a total time required to "distill" all the info of 6-9 hrs./wk. just for this one class - I can understand your frustration here!

I think the key to doing well here is going to be efficiency. Once you surpass a certain amount of time spent just organizing the information, the benefits you reap during your review will diminish because of all the time spent organizing. So somehow, some way, you will need to find a way to drastically trim down the amount of time spent post-lecture condensing all the information.

I've taken a few classes that compare well to this (also a senior bio major here). My strategy in one case was to take my laptop to write/transcribe my notes immediately into a format I could study from (use shorthand as necessary), and also have a pen and paper handy to draw any graphs that might be presented.