3 Lectures And Coursework
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office
Robert Frost
3.1 Overview
In your first year, your typical week will consist of a mixture of lectures, seminars, tutorials, problem classes, labs, coursework and workshops.
For example, in my first semester, I had four modules consisting of three lectures a week and a problem class lasting 45 minutes. Alongside this, I had Core Skills and workshop sessions, which left me plenty of time to be involved in a range of clubs and societies.
3.1.1 Core Skills
Core Skills is a compulsory and non-credited module that is taken by everyone in the first year.
As part of the module, you will have to pass two Core Maths Skills Tests, one per semester. The tests gives you a way of making sure you have these skills right from the beginning of your study (Semester 1) and as your study progresses (Semester 2). Both of these are online exams that can be taken repeatedly until you have passed.
There are also scheduled sessions on employability and digital skills. These sessions are designed to maximise your digital literacy and employment prospects during and after your degree.
3.1.2 Problem Classes
Each module will have a weekly problem class. These are quite different from lectures. Instead of listening to new material being introduced, the focus is on working through questions and understanding how the ideas from the lectures actually get used.
The exact format can vary slightly between modules and lecturers. Sometimes the lecturer will go through selected problems on the board, sometimes students will suggest questions they want to see explained, and sometimes you go might go through some coursework questions.
One of the most important thing you can do to make problem classes useful is look at the problems beforehand. If you walk into a problem class having never seen the sheet before, it’s much harder to follow what’s going on and becomes easy to just copy down solutions without really understanding them.
3.2 Online Learning Tools
You’ll become familiar with a variety of names very quickly: Blackboard, Seats, and Panopto
Blackboard is the university’s online learning platform where lectures notes are uploaded, announcements are posted and the coursework and recordings are stored. If something official happens in the module, it will most likely appear there. It’s useful having a quick look at notes before the lecture if you can, even just seeing the headings can make it much easier to follow what’s happening when you’re sitting in the lecture hall.
Panopto is where you can access lecture recordings, including historical recordings.
One of the most useful things you can do in the first week is link your timetable to your own calender, whether that’s Google Calendar or something equivalent. Remember that universities will not chase you the way school did. There are no bells and no-one reminds you every morning where you’re supposed to me, so the responsibility shifts to you.
Seats is the system used for timetabling and attendance. It shows your lecture locations, times, and room numbers. It’s also how attendance is recorded. At the start of lectures, a QR or Seats code will be displayed on the board which students can scan or type to register their attendance on the app.
3.3 Recorded Doesn’t Mean Optional
You will quickly realise that most lectures are recorded, and at some point you might be temped to think, ‘I can just watch it later’, especially on a cold and rainy morning, or after a late night, or when the idea of sitting in a lecture feels mildly exhausting.
I cannot stress this enough, but being physically present in a lecture matters more than you think. When you are in the room, you are less likely to pause a video and get distracted by your phone. You are also less likely to tell yourself that you’ll ‘finish it later’ and risk not coming back to it. You are more likely to stay with the explanations as they unfold, even if you don’t fully understand them yet. You hear the throwaway comments that never make it into typed notes, and pick up on the emphasis in the lecturer’s voice when they say something is important, and that emphasis stays with you.
There is also something about the collective focus that recordings cannot replicate. Sitting in a room full of people who are all attempting to follow the same proof creates a concentration that watching it alone at 1.5x speed, half distracted cannot compete with. In addition to that, you are able to ask questions during or after the lecture if you attend in person.
Recordings are useful, in fact, they are incredibly useful for revision or revisiting a proof if that felt unclear the first time. They are a safety net, but not a replacement for showing up.
3.4 Catching Up On Lectures
At some point, you may very well miss a lecture. Maybe you were ill, overslept, or just needed a morning off. It happens, and one missed lecture is not a crisis.
The trick to avoid spiralling is to catch up quickly. If you miss a lecture, watch the recording within a day or two while the topic and notation is still familiar. Don’t let it all pile onto future you.
When you do catch up, don’t treat the recording like a background noise. Try to follow the argument yourself. Stop and ask whether you understand what each part is doing.
You won’t always find it easy to sit down and follow a lecture, I certainly couldn’t at all times. In fact, at one point in Semester 2, I’d go to the gym on weekends, get on one of the stationary bikes and rewatch my Calculus lectures while cycling. I wasn’t taking notes or anything, but I was surprisingly engaged with the material. There isn’t a single ‘correct’ way to study and sometimes, the hardest part is just getting yourself to engage with the material at all, so if something slightly unconventional helps you do that, it’s probably worth trying.
3.5 Asking questions
If you ever find yourself sitting in a lecture room, slightly unsure about a definition or confused about some step in a proof, and you look around the room and everyone else looks calm, and you might think, ‘Maybe it’s just me’.
It almost never is. Most people are running through the same internal debate of ‘Is this worth asking? Is this obvious? Is this too stupid of a question?’, etc.
Questions like ‘How did we go from Line 1 to Line 2 of this proof’, or ‘Is there an example where this conditions fails?’ are perfectly good questions to ask in lecture. There are no stupid questions.
By asking questions, you benefit yourself and others, including the lecturer. Learning mathematics is a process and asking questions is part of that process. If asking during the lecture feels too intimidating, most lecturers are more than happy for students to ask them at the end of the lecture, or during office hours and workshops.
3.5.1 Talking in lectures
Lectures are shared learning spaces and everyone in the room is trying to concentrate on the same material. It might seem harmless to chat quietly during a lecture, but even small conversations can be a distracting for the people sitting nearby especially with an attention demanding subject like maths.
More importantly, it’s also a matter of respect. The lecturer has prepared the material and everyone else in the room has chosen to be there to learn. Talking over them or holding side conversations can come across as rude even if that isn’t the intention.
If you want to discuss something with the person next to you, it’s usually better to wait for a natural pause, write it down somewhere, or bring it up after the lecture. When everyone treats the lecture space with a bit of consideration, it makes it much easier for everyone else to follow what’s going on.
3.6 Giving feedback
At some point in the semester, you’ll be asked to complete SSLC or mid-semester feedback forms. It’s very tempting to either rush through them and give vague feedback, or completely ignore them.
Feedback only works when many students contribute and when what they write is useful. One vague comment does nothing, but ten clear comments pointing to the same issue are hard to ignore.
Bad feedback describes a reaction, good feedback gives information someone can act on. Writing ‘Confusing lecture’ doesn’t give anyone anything to work with, whereas writing ‘There are too many definitions and very few examples to see how those definitions work’ or ‘slides move on before there’s time to copy examples’ is useful.
Lecturers are not mind readers. They’ve worked with the material for years, so what feels obvious to them may not be obvious to you. If many students are lost but say nothing, nothing changes. Feedback helps the lecturers who can adjust delivery or structure which turn benefits the cohort, and it also helps you because explaining confusion forces you to think about what you didn’t understand.
3.6.1 Pace of lectures
Some lectures may feel fast. This often happens when you’re seeing abstract ideas for the first time. That discomfort is normal as understanding usually comes after repeated exposure and not always during the first pass.
Other lectures will feel slow, perhaps even repetitive, and you may find yourself zoning out because you think you already understand it. Instead of disengaging, use that time to look deeper into what it being taught, asking why the definition is phrased in a certain way, or what breaks if an assumption is removed, or even how the idea connects to something you’ve already seen.
The pace of a lecture may not match your personal learning speed exactly, and that’s normal. But if something feels consistently unreasonable, say so clearly and specifically in feedback or directly to the lecturer.
3.7 Coursework
Most modules include coursework, usually in the form of weekly problem sheets. These are typically released on a fixed day and due the following week, although the exact timing varies by module. Some are submitted on paper, others through online systems.
For example, in my Year 1 Semester 1, I had weekly online questions for my Stats module, alternate weekly problem sheets for Number Theory, and weekly problem sheets for Linear Algebra and Calculus.
Often with things like coursework, the hardest part is simply starting. A common pattern is to ignore the sheet for a few days, glance at it midweek, and then realise late in the weekend that nothing has been attempted. What helped me most was treating coursework as part of the structure of the week rather than as something to squeeze in around everything else. In other words, not waiting until I felt like doing it, but deciding in advance when I was going to sit down and at least make a start.
Coursework tends to go much better when you give yourself time to think, get stuck, ask questions, and come back to things, rather than trying to force the whole process into one stressed evening. And If you get really stuck after making a genuine attempt, that is exactly what workshops, office hours, and discussions with others are there for.
