Study the Lecture Content

Now that you have watched the lecture, you have to learn the material. This is your third pass (after previewing and watching). It is now your job to organize the material for learning: rearrange, group, or chunk information together so that you can get a better understanding. It is important to study actively. 

• Allow about an hour and a half to work through the handout for each hour of lecture. Your aim during this time is to produce a ‘study product.’ In this practice case you should aim to spend about 40 minutes.
• Ask yourself if the main points emphasized in the lecture match your understanding from previewing. How do you now see the big picture for this topic? Try to summarize the entire lecture in one or two sentences.
• Review the list of terms from your preview of the material. Are there any terms to add? Are there any that could be removed? (This is the word list we made.)
• Clarify the definition of each term. What is it? Where is it found? When is it used? What does it do?
• Compare and contrast each term with one or more additional terms. Think about what each term could be confused with. Taking the time to remind yourself not to confuse X with Y will make any possible confusion more real for you and help you to avoid it.
• What would be the best way to organize the material for learning? Can you group terms into categories/classes? Is there a temporal sequence of events?
• How would this organization be represented best? A table? A concept map? A diagram? A brief paragraph/outline/summary? What columns would a table need? What kind of concept map would be most appropriate?
• Create a study product (table/concept map/etc.) illustrating the organization of the material presented in the lecture segment you have just watched. Think carefully how each term/concept fits into the overall structure.

Remember, these study products are dynamic works. You’ll never finish learning, so you’ll never have a “finished” product. This means that you do not need to include every single detail. In the next section (MCQ practice), you will identify gaps in your understanding and use them to improve your study product.

Keep your work, and bring it with you to the first week of classes in Dominica.