Teaching sessions

Lectures

Lectures are a key part of your learning and are just one part of how you will learn during your time at St Andrews.

To get the most out of a lecture you should make your participation active. Take notes, consider how the material relates to previous study, note remaining questions you have, and prepare a summary in your own words of the main things you have learned from the lectures.

Active participation will be hugely beneficial to you. Our subject is so much more than a pile of facts to be memorised. Look for the underlying ideas. See how particular techniques can be used in different situations. Ask yourself what approximations have been made, and why these are (or are not) justified in different situations. Aim not just to be able to reproduce what you saw in this derivation or problem, but to be able to work out related but different derivations or problems on your own.

Think carefully about how best to structure your studies: it's a good idea to set time aside for serious study with each lecture. Ensure that each week you're up to date with reviewing notes, making summaries, tackling tutorial questions, and asking questions. In many lecture-based modules you will also do significant reading around the subject.

Tutorials

Tutorials feature in many modules. For tutorials you should

• Consider beforehand the material covered up to that time in the module and work out what queries you may wish to bring to the discussions.
• Attempt all tutorial work that is scheduled to have been done by that session and consider what aspects of that you would like to discuss.

Laboratories

Prepare for the activity as requested, engage actively, be willing to ask questions where you have them, and aim to understand the broader learning goals not "just" how to do this particular thing that you are doing at that time.