Most learning doesn't happen during the lecture.
Preview
Prep is important to make the most of the lecture time. We often don't have enough time to read all of the assignments. Instead of rushing to read through all of the pages, instead spend some time reading at medium depth and the think about the content. Having good prep reduces cognitive load during the lecture because it's not all new material. Practical/hands-on experience prior to lecture helps with that chaining process too.
Having the background information ready means that you're not swimming in a bunch of unrelated information, and you can start to organize the ideas into a coherent structure. Organized information in your head is much more likely to stick (developing knowledge/understanding is the goal, not receiving an information transmission).
During
During the lecture: pay attention. Pay attention in a way that helps you make sense. If taking notes, use them to synthesize ideas and write them in your own words, rather than creating a transcription. Having questions come to mind while listening is a good sign, identifying differences between lecture material and prep material is another. Listening with the intention of finding a question to ask is a good sign. Take a break 20 minutes in to reset your attention span.
Review
Make sense of what happened. Use Free recall. If you've taken notes, expand them. Do the last few Rs in SQ3R. Review for this lecture may also be prep for next lecture. Don't be shy about reviewing fundamentals because Recall vs Recognition is a problem. Homework is more about practicing skills through repetition rather than building conceptual frameworks, so it's important to ground homework assignments in the theory they're based on in order to build those connections and create connected knowledge: which techniques apply to which kinds of questions, and why? Even before trying to solve them. Any amount of review helps, but obviously we're all constrained for time.
Review Frameworks
Theme here seems to be to understand the whole and its parts, at whatever conceptual levels exist for that field.
Big Principles with Cases/Examples
Natural Selection is a big principle. The changes in Galapagos tortoises observed over 100 years is an example. For fields of study that tend to have this dynamic, it's good to keep both kinds of information in your head.
Claims and Evidence
Claims are harder to "prove", more philosophical. Evidence is used to argue in support of these claims. Need to understand the common claims in the field, what evidence supports or contradicts them, and how strongly. Is psychology a good example of this?
Techniques and Tools
Grow your tool collection, and also learn how to use each tool effectively and efficiently.
Rules, Cases, and Reasoning
Example: attorneys. Rules (laws, regulations, etc) exist, are tested by cases (applying rules to real-world conditions), and they're argued with reasoning to support or contradict. Noting a lot of overlap between those things.
Parts vs Systems
Example: anatomy. Cells join together to make tissues join together to make organs join together to make organisms. Important to understand things at each conceptual/organizational level. The whole is important to understand in itself, but it's also important to understand the parts that constitute it, and how those two conceptual levels relate.
Skill of Learning from Lectures
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