Lectures as part of course are designed to be attended after reviewing the material at least once on your own. That way you know what to look out for, and your notes will be a concise revision. Its astonishing how many students resist this fact, even when it is clearly spelled out for them.

Trying to write down everything the lecturer says is at best inefficient, and at worst a complete waste of time when you lose the thread.

Interesting, I have never heard of this, and definitely none of my professors instructed me to familiarize with the material before a lecture. So I never did. I suppose this could've been a useful technique.

When I was teaching undergrads I always told them that a good minimum target was 3 hours of work for every 1 hour of lecture. Roughly one of those hours was to be spent on the lecture material beforehand.

Think about it this way. If all you are doing is rushing to copy down what the lecturer says, you don't really hear it or have a chance to think about it. So you have to review anyway - if you spend that same time beforehand, you are ready with questions and already know what parts you are unsure of. With a short revision of your notes following also, you're in great shape.

How much lecture is there than? Here in germany 3 Seminars a day with 2h each are often the norm. That would mean 18h of prep and 6h of seminars a day.

That's a good point, systems vary. That recommendation was for a 3 lecture hour per week course (there are additional tutorials, etc), and a full course load would be 4-5 courses a term. So that arithmetic gets you to 50-60hours/week in total, which is about right. With an easier course load the expectation might be 40hr/week.

The expectation is you would spend some time in formal lectures, some in tutorial sessions (usually with graduate student assistants) and some on your own - in roughly equal proportions.

I did teach some courses with more time in formal lecture (per week) and less in tutorial sessions, in which case the ratio would be adjusted to end up at around the same place.

Wow that sounds intensive. What does a 2hr seminar usually consist of in Germany?

Could be a cultural difference in seminar style?

In law school it was mandatory to review the material before class and be prepared to discuss it, because you likely would be called on to explain a case or concept for the class. It's a bit anxiety inducing but forced me to learn the material, which is I suppose the whole purpose of a class.

exactly!

> Lectures as part of course are designed to be attended after reviewing the material at least once on your own.

> Its astonishing how many students resist this fact, even when it is clearly spelled out for them.

I've taken a lot of classes, I've been a teaching assistant for a lot of classes, I've observed a lot of classes, and I've never gotten the impression that the instructor expected the students to have already looked at the material. Certainly no one ever said that explicitly.

I will say that it is true that the handful of times I tried to structure my class differently and have students read material on their own before lecture, they were indeed resistant and it didn't go well. And I do think that would be a better approach. But my point is that this is overwhelmingly not what is generally expected of students, at least in my experience, mostly at state colleges in the US.

This is simply professors acknowledging reality.

If I taught my class to those who "previewed the material" I'd be teaching to 1 or 2 students ... maybe.

In reality, the best students do exactly this.

Fine, but then you are agreeing with me: most instructors do not expect their students to read material ahead of time and do not structure their classes as if that is the expectation.

In fact, in my experience it's not even usually possible to read material before the lecture because students are only given at best a vague idea of what specifically is coming next.

> In fact, in my experience it's not even usually possible to read material before the lecture because students are only given at best a vague idea of what specifically is coming next.

Really? That has not been my experience.

Every class I have taught had a detailed syllabus with chapter and page assignments. Generally, they were spot on until the class started getting behind.

For English classes, which book you need to have read is always listed.

Which classes would you be referring to?

If most instructors are failing at their job, that's a shame. There's no reason save ego for an instructor to assume that students only learn by listening to the instructor speak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

That's probably true in typical STEM lecture courses. In case-study type MBA and law courses and in various humanities seminars, it's certainly different. I'm not sure how adaptable that is to STEM subjects at scale. (Though it does work 1:1 or 1:few there as well.)

No they aren't. Half of my university classes weren't following anything I could review in advance, and a number of them tested on things that only appeared in lecture.

I had a single class where the professor handed us a sheet of paper with all the reading and assignments in advance. It was wonderful.

> Lectures as part of course are designed to be attended after reviewing the material at least once on your own.

It's easy to realize this in retrospect, but I think it should be pounded into students' heads starting at least in high school. You can use the sink or swim metaphor if you like, but human beings aren't robots that can just flip a switch to change behavior.

If you already know the material, what's the point of attending the lecture?

None, actually. If you know the material, feel free to skip my lectures.

The material I teach is generally considered "hard". Most students need my help to point out "This is the main path. Learn this. Let's go over this multiple times in different ways until you see the commonality. That stuff is auxiliary--ignore that for now. Once you have the main idea down, that stuff is just a little bit of extra work."

Every class is different. One class will get an idea very quickly while another will struggle--so my job is to tweak things for that in lectures. In addition, sometimes a class will have a huge gap that you will have to back up and fill.

Even with STEM subjects, teaching has a lot of art to it.

I get the impression that you and ska are very, very good teachers. Not to disrespect any of my professors, but a lot of times I ended up skipping lectures because I just wasn't getting anything out of them. Was I a model student who always reviewed material before lectures? No. But I definitely felt I got a lot more out of going directly to the source materials and working problems than I did watching a professor walk other students through problems.

It's unlikely that you fully understand the material from a single read.

However, if you can convince yourself that you do then by all means skip that lecture. You'll find out how accurate you were on the exam.

Because reviewing and being familiar with material is different from knowing it, and even if you know a topic, surely you can learn more.