The need to attend lectures
 

I was just pondering this...

I have attended maybe 4 lectures for one of my modules over the past 4 months ish.
This isnt because im a lazy reprobate (although i am). its because the tutor was more boring than watching paint dry.

she pretty much read from her slides and babbled for ages with no visual aids.


I dont learn like this...so i decided not to bother attending.


Now whilst this may have doomed me to complete failure a mere 10 years ago, im now able to simply pull up all the same notes that she uses and read them and make notes as i would in a lecture room.

So with this inreasingly useful technology situation it seems pointless going to lectures where i know im going to learn sweet f all.

Has anyone else found this ? That university no longer seems to require the 'work load' that previous students must have had to cope with simploy because its all in electronic form and easily accessible....

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

Back in the day you just got someone's lecture notes in staggered order and learnt like that if you didn't attend exams. Or so I hear.

I have a lecturer this year who deliberately leaves out important bits of his lecture notes when he posts them on the internet. This is to ensure that you attend his class. I feel like I'm outplaying him by both not attending his course and then failing!

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

Well for Law at my uni, the record all lectures and you can listen to them online, thus never having the need to go to a single one, however for Politics, the young lecturers all do there notes in powerpoint and once again put them on the internet, but the old school proffesors dont (you dont want to miss there lectures anyway as they are always interesting) But you can go to little or no lectures and get away with it.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

SO far I haven't attended many lectures this year. I guess the exams will show if this was a good idea or not ;)

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

Apart from Practicals and Labs all our lecture notes are on the internet too.

Naturally the 'boring' lectures have minimal attendance.

I'm completely happy with this situation however, long may it continue.

I see no reason to be bored to death by some elderly lecturer who's voice carries no further than the third row, refuses to use the microphone provided and still drags a white board, which is totally unviewable from anywhere approaching the middle of the theatre or back, into lectures.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

Depends on the course. With maths it isnt vital because in most lecturse everything is written on the board, so everyone ends up with pretty much the same notes and it's easy enough to get anything you miss from someone else. However, if it were a course that was less 'here are the facts' (such as philosophy, English, or even some maths courses here) then I would want to make my own notes because I dont really trust anyone else to do it as well as I would.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

It really doesn't matter for me if I go to uni and take my notes there or read through them at home. At uni I at least do it, while at home I tell myself to do it later (and normally don't do it at all).

That's why I normally still go to uni.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

i have those too, but I am cheeky enough to mail them 1 week before the exam that while revising subject x and chapter y some things were unclear and that I did look up the notes and my own but that I didn't completely work it out yet and that i am vastly intrested in the subject and if he could give me a quick run-down

this either results in a comprehensive summary of all that is left out by said teacher, or a lunch with him where we run things over

I usually score 85% up if I do classes this way, but then, I usually am genuinly intrested.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

for one of my units i went to one seminar in october and havent been since. I decided that i really couldnt be bothered. It probably won't be the same for those of you who go to better universities, but the tutor tended to go over the same point 4 or 5 times in a slightly different way, and he managed to make an interesting subject boring through repeition. So i stopped.

Another one of my units i went to the very first lecture just to find out when my seminar was, then didnt go again. Boring etc. One more i did the same thing, except i ended up going to another lecture once when i just happened to be in uni (we did no work, and watched "alfie", great :) )

really though, i see no need to do it. As long as I do the coursework and SOME revision for the exams, i don't see how im not going to pass. Personally id rather get up at 1pm every day, watch neighbours, pootle about and smoke weed and then go to the pub rather than bother going to university to "learn" with a lot of stupid people.

perhaps im being conceited and overconfident here, but i just calls it as i sees it.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

I have just realised the folly in:

1. Only going to half of my lectures.
2. Only listening in half my lectures.
3. Only writing notes in half of the lectures I attended.
4. Only writing comprehensible notes consisting of more than 3 lines in half of those lectures.
5. Only bothering to find those notes and attempt to organise them 11 days before my exam starts.

Hmm. Having never revised before in my life, and considering the above qualifications, should I start now?

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

At Manc Uni (on my course at least) lecture attendance was optional. You could go to the 1st one, pick up a load of notes for the term, and that would be it. They encouraged you not to turn up if you were just going to sit there either half asleep, or reading a paper etc, which I guess makes sense.

My highest mark in my uni finals (and ever), was for a module I had never attended a single lecture, example class or tutorial session for. Go figure.

Re: The need to attend lectures
 

I've only missed 2 lectures and 0 tutorials during my time at uni (in final semester now) and both of those were in the first semester of my first year. It's not that I'm a geek when it comes to my course (ok, I am a bit), I just think it's a bit piss poor if you can' make <10 hours a week. That and I would only be bored at home and its a chance to chat to mates on my course.