Listening to lectures and taking good notes are skills that can help make your life as a college student much easier. The first tip to understand is that you need to prepare for your classes. This means reading the required selection for that lecture and reviewing any PowerPoints that might have been posted. Once you are in class, taking notes is more than a piece of paper and copying what the professor says. I suggest you look at the following link that provides tips for listening to lectures: http://learninghub.une.edu.au/tlc/aso/aso-online/learning-strategies/pdf/Transition_signals.pdf
In order to gain the most out of the lecture, one needs to utilize tools to better organize your notes and ideas. The Cornell system and mindmaps (discussed in a previous blog post) are two interactive ways to take notes. The following link gives an example of the Cornell system of taking notes: http://learninghub.une.edu.au/tlc/aso/aso-online/learning-strategies/pdf/Podcast-Cornell_example.pdf I suggest the Cornell system because it proves to be a great studying tool for an exam including main ideas, possible questions, and a summary. The layout allows you to focus on the main points of the lecture reducing the stress to write down every word.
Now let’s say you did not understand a concept a professor addresses in her lecture. Podcasts and educational videos serve as helpful online tools to supplement lectures. Educational videos can be found at www.youtube.com/edu. Podcasts can be located using search engines or through iTunes. Both provide visual and audio supplements to your lectures that can help erase confusion on an academic topic. The best part of the both these tools is one can access them 24 hours a day from any device!