I thought I would write this weeks post on what really goes on at university in terms of studying and timetabling. As some of you may already know university consists of lectures, seminars and workshops so I'm going to break those down and explain them to you.
I am going to talk about them in relation to my particular university and degree as I don't want to generalise and then end up being wrong as I'm sure all universities have different ways and means.
Lectures
A lecture for me consists of every single person studying education studies as well as (dependent on the topic of lecture) certain other degrees for example 'Childhood and youth studies' are also in my Young Child lectures and 'Disability studies' accompany us in our Inclusion Through Professional Practice lectures.
So they have the biggest capacity of students sitting in lectures. I think this is because Education Studies has a lot of similar degrees and therefore we all need to study the same things sometimes so why not put us altogether and kill two birds with one stone.
Certainly this is the case for a lot of first years that I have spoken to from other universities. We will all split off into more specific groups in our second years we've been told and I do think the way they do it is a good efficient system.
I have four lectures a week, all but one are two hours long and the other is just one hour, however the time is made up with a two hour seminar. The lectures give you all the information you need for what you're studying that week and it is entirely up to you to make notes and gain the best knowledge you can from them as you don't have lecturers nagging you like school, one thing about being a university student is how much independence you have compared to what you did have at school.
In my case, lecture notes are put up in advance so that we can print the slides off and make notes from them as that is how some people like to organize themselves. However, I do know that some lecturers prefer to put the slides up after the lecture has finished as it encourages students to attend the lectures.
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| This is pretty much what my lecture halls look like. Some this size and some smaller, we have a screen at the front which the slides are projected onto.
Seminars
A seminar is a group of about 20 students who have been broken down from the larger lecture group to allow a more one on one experience for the students with the tutor. Seminars always come after the lectures and are a chance for us to recap and discuss what went on in each weeks lecture within a smaller group of people.
We often have activities to do in seminars which are always something to do with the lecture that would have happened beforehand. These are good because they allow us to think about the lecture in more depth and also hear other peoples outlooks on the lecture and topic.
Seminars are usually an hour long with the exception of the one I have already mentioned which makes up for the short lecture. They are worth it because they allow both us students and tutors to listen and build a relationship with each other, they also give students more of an opportunity to speak out as some panic if they have a question to ask when in a large group and then never ask it.
Workshops
Workshops are optional and are about anything and everything. I couldn't find my workshop timetable when writing this post so I will just have to give you a couple of titles of some that I can remember.
They are basically extra lessons that specify in a very particular topic to allow students to brush up on the skills that they are not so hot at.
A few workshops I can remember which will hopefully give you a good idea of what they are like:
That should give you a good insight into how a workshop works.
They are held in the library and are open to anyone and everyone and personally I think they are a brilliant idea.They are there for students who may be worrying about something excessively and will give them the help they need to understand whatever it is they are worrying about.
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