Is it important I go to lectures?

Lectures are pretty iconic and one of the first things people think of when they think of uni (or the studying part of university anyway). But there’s a lot of discussion over whether or not they’re actually useful. Last week, The Student Room posted the article Why don’t university students attend lectures?. It was an interesting read, and I would recommend it to anyone thinking of coming to university, already at university, or to lecturers themselves. Because lectures are supposed to be one of the key learning tools available to me as a student, and I don’t feel like they’re all that useful.

I have five modules this semester, colour coded as red, purple, orange, green, and blue. And all the modules have lectures. Some are more useful than others. Some are completely useless and I don’t even bother to show up.

I won’t go into the subject of each module, because that doesn’t matter that much.

Green lectures are my most useful. This week we got a new lecturer, and I don’t know if this title may be changed, but at the moment this is true. Green lectures teach me what I need to know, with the lecturer going into detail of the information she provides (and he, previously) on the PowerPoint presentation. She (and he, previously) uses the presentation as a tool rather than reading off of it.

We’re also given hand outs of the slides to make notes on. This is really useful.

In orange lectures, for example, the lecture slides are really useful, and the lecturer expands on the points on the slides and explains everything so we can understand it, but he goes through things too fast for most people to make notes. I make really lose notes, because I know I can go online and find the lecture slides (only posted after the lecture, to make having the slides printed in the lecture impossible) and make notes from that in my own time. But even I struggle with writing notes in orange lectures. They’re useful, but not vital.

And then there’s blue lectures. I haven’t been to a blue lecture in weeks. I’m not proud of that fact, but I find I can use my time much better outside of the lecture hall, where all I do is fall asleep. The lecturer simply reads off of the slides, goes through everything too fast to make even the most basic of notes, and any questions are answered with “read the course textbook” (the course textbook is brilliant, but I think I will be spending most of my Christmas break reading it). But the blue lecturer is good in other ways. He too posts all his lecture slides online (at around ten o’clock the night before the lecture, making it pretty difficult, but not impossible, to print off before the lecture), as well as page and chapter numbers of the material that was covered in the lecture.

I worked out that, if I’m paying £9000 a year for this course (which I am), that makes it £4500 a semester. With the five modules this semester, that’s £900 a module. It may seem like I’m throwing £900 away by not showing up to my blue lectures (especially because the only contact hours I have for that module (and most of my other modules) is through lectures), but I don’t feel like that’s the case. The material is covered out of the lectures, in my own space, where I’m not sat in a crowded lecture hall, getting frustrated because I can’t write any notes and because there isn’t actually enough space to breath in those rooms, in an environment that I can work better in.

Green lectures are my most useful lectures, followed by red, purple, orange, then blue. That’s not because of the content covered (in that case the purple and orange modules would be right at the top if ordered in I have no idea what is going on, someone help me scale), but in order of usefulness. I don’t want to be stuck in an overcrowded lecture theatre, easily distracted by my own imagination, if I can help it, and I’m not going to go unless it’s useful or important (that is, my attendance is required to hand in coursework or something). As long as the work gets done, I don’t see what the problem is.