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To be honest, I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University, with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and speaker

To be honest, I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University, with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and speaker notes outside of class and learn the material ahead of exams/coursework. I managed to come near the top of my class this way with something like 5% attendance at lectures. I expect this isn't the case in the top Universities, but I left my University thinking I could have just paid to take the exams and self-taught the rest of the material. In hindsight, I was really taking out huge loans for a few years of drinking, socialising and playing video games. In the working world, I've found meetings to be similarly pointless. 95% of the time I'd rather hash out a problem on an email thread where thoughts are expressed clearly, re-read and understood by others in their own time.

vturner 9y ago
Agreed, I would on occasion skip class and read the text for an hour in grad school. It was amazing how much more I learned by reading and processing the ideas at my own pace instead of the lecture. The issue was you never knew when the professor would say something not in the text yet on the exam. I was in applied mathematics. Meetings are equally pointless. Usually the most verbal people dominate the meeting. I've noticed how outspoken one is rarely correlated with critical thinking ability.
azernik 9y ago
I found the discussion sections to be the real value proposition of university - after reading the lecture material, got to spend time with a grad student and ask questions about the material.
cyphar 9y ago
I found that the usefulness of lectures depends very strongly on how good the lecturer is, as well as the topic being discussed. When studying physics I found that the lectures were incredibly useful, because it's quite hard to get in the "zone" of understanding the derivation being discussed when at home. However, with mathematics subjects the textbook was almost always a much better learning tool, because the derivation did not require a discussion of the physics that justified said derivation. Computer Science lectures were almost unilaterally a waste of time.
- wastedhours 9y ago
  I had an engineering mathematics lecture where the lecturer was so bad attending was a net negative, as in, not only did he add nothing to the notes, but his frequent mistakes and side tangents led us down so many useless avenues we'd end up more confused.
- SatvikBeri 9y ago
  It also depends a lot on the student - personally I tend to learn faster from a mediocre textbook than an excellent lecturer. But my wife is the opposite, she retains much more from in-person lectures than videos or books.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  On the contrary, I found that mathematics was the one subject where attending lectures was actually helpful. Seeing the lecturer work through problems made it a lot easier to understand than trying to read the lecture notes. Watching recorded lectures would do the same though, but they weren't recorded. They had the capability, but the maths department decided that they didn't want to, which I think was silly at best, and discriminatory at worst (e.g. people with mental health issues might be unable to attend lectures, thus being put at an unfair disadvantage).
reubeniv 9y ago
I think often underrated is the value of knowing what you need to learn, which lectures certainly help with imho.
jaymzcampbell 9y ago
> I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University, with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and speaker notes outside of class and learn the material ahead of exams/coursework. This was very much my experience too. My first foray to university was the traditional full time format. I really didn't get on well with the lectures - it felt too slow in some cases, too fleeting in others and beyond a few particular classes, not very illuminating at all. For what it's worth this was at Imperial so I guess a "top" uni. In later life, I did a degree with the Open University which has no lectures at all (well almost, there's a few online and night schools but they are more like practicals than lectures). Instead it's all self-study from guidebooks and notes with regularly graded coursework which for many of the courses is a pre-requisite to pass the examinations. I greatly preferred the latter option and felt I had a much better understanding of the material. It's been mentioned elsewhere on this thread, but audio/video recordings are a different ballgame all together for me. I actually really like lectures in that way. I guess it all boils down to the idea of tailored, self-service. I can review/pause/skip and repeat at my leisure.
regularfry 9y ago
My experience at university was the reverse. Despite having very good slides and speaker notes, there were intuitions for how the material hung together which I just wouldn't have got without hearing how the lecturers spoke about it. Meetings, on the other hand...
beavis2 9y ago
Everyone knows meetings are "stealth breaks"
christophilus 9y ago
The sole value I got out of lectures was the ability to raise my hand and ask questions. Other than that, yeah. It's a pretty bad medium for learning, I'd say. And even the one benefit I mentioned is now arguably better accomplished via a good forum / community.
thedoops 9y ago
The real value of a teacher in the same room is for immediate feedback. I'm of the opinion that lectures should be replaced with active study sessions where the teacher(s) walk the class through problems and/or help individual students through gaps in their knowledge. Lectures can be asynchronous; rather than the teacher reinventing the wheel, let them assign students to watch the best lectures available online. Reverse the current model, do most homework at school, and watch the lectures at home.
harrisjt 9y ago
That is definitely true of sub top-20 universities. Even intros for the top-20s as well. This however is not true of that top tier for the average student.

vturner 9y ago

Agreed, I would on occasion skip class and read the text for an hour in grad school. It was amazing how much more I learned by reading and processing the ideas at my own pace instead of the lecture. The issue was you never knew when the professor would say something not in the text yet on the exam. I was in applied mathematics. Meetings are equally pointless. Usually the most verbal people dominate the meeting. I've noticed how outspoken one is rarely correlated with critical thinking ability.

azernik 9y ago

I found the discussion sections to be the real value proposition of university - after reading the lecture material, got to spend time with a grad student and ask questions about the material.

cyphar 9y ago

I found that the usefulness of lectures depends very strongly on how good the lecturer is, as well as the topic being discussed. When studying physics I found that the lectures were incredibly useful, because it's quite hard to get in the "zone" of understanding the derivation being discussed when at home. However, with mathematics subjects the textbook was almost always a much better learning tool, because the derivation did not require a discussion of the physics that justified said derivation. Computer Science lectures were almost unilaterally a waste of time.

wastedhours 9y ago
I had an engineering mathematics lecture where the lecturer was so bad attending was a net negative, as in, not only did he add nothing to the notes, but his frequent mistakes and side tangents led us down so many useless avenues we'd end up more confused.
SatvikBeri 9y ago
It also depends a lot on the student - personally I tend to learn faster from a mediocre textbook than an excellent lecturer. But my wife is the opposite, she retains much more from in-person lectures than videos or books.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
On the contrary, I found that mathematics was the one subject where attending lectures was actually helpful. Seeing the lecturer work through problems made it a lot easier to understand than trying to read the lecture notes. Watching recorded lectures would do the same though, but they weren't recorded. They had the capability, but the maths department decided that they didn't want to, which I think was silly at best, and discriminatory at worst (e.g. people with mental health issues might be unable to attend lectures, thus being put at an unfair disadvantage).

reubeniv 9y ago

I think often underrated is the value of knowing what you need to learn, which lectures certainly help with imho.

jaymzcampbell 9y ago

> I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University, with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and speaker notes outside of class and learn the material ahead of exams/coursework. This was very much my experience too. My first foray to university was the traditional full time format. I really didn't get on well with the lectures - it felt too slow in some cases, too fleeting in others and beyond a few particular classes, not very illuminating at all. For what it's worth this was at Imperial so I guess a "top" uni. In later life, I did a degree with the Open University which has no lectures at all (well almost, there's a few online and night schools but they are more like practicals than lectures). Instead it's all self-study from guidebooks and notes with regularly graded coursework which for many of the courses is a pre-requisite to pass the examinations. I greatly preferred the latter option and felt I had a much better understanding of the material. It's been mentioned elsewhere on this thread, but audio/video recordings are a different ballgame all together for me. I actually really like lectures in that way. I guess it all boils down to the idea of tailored, self-service. I can review/pause/skip and repeat at my leisure.

regularfry 9y ago

My experience at university was the reverse. Despite having very good slides and speaker notes, there were intuitions for how the material hung together which I just wouldn't have got without hearing how the lecturers spoke about it. Meetings, on the other hand...

beavis2 9y ago

Everyone knows meetings are "stealth breaks"

christophilus 9y ago

The sole value I got out of lectures was the ability to raise my hand and ask questions. Other than that, yeah. It's a pretty bad medium for learning, I'd say. And even the one benefit I mentioned is now arguably better accomplished via a good forum / community.

thedoops 9y ago

The real value of a teacher in the same room is for immediate feedback. I'm of the opinion that lectures should be replaced with active study sessions where the teacher(s) walk the class through problems and/or help individual students through gaps in their knowledge. Lectures can be asynchronous; rather than the teacher reinventing the wheel, let them assign students to watch the best lectures available online. Reverse the current model, do most homework at school, and watch the lectures at home.

harrisjt 9y ago

That is definitely true of sub top-20 universities. Even intros for the top-20s as well. This however is not true of that top tier for the average student.