THE ROLE OF LECTURES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AT KEELE

Peter Knight, Physical Geography Course Director.

e-mail: p.g.knight@esci.keele.ac.uk

These notes are intended mainly for new students taking 1st-year modules, but
should be useful to everybody studying Physical Geography at Keele.

How we study at University

Lectures play a very important role in Physical Geography at Keele, even though
they take up only a relatively small amount of your time. However, many students at
the start of their university careers misunderstand the role of lectures within the
course and therefore dont get the full benefit from them. Lectures usually work in a
very different way from classes at school or college. It is very important that you
understand how the lectures and the other activities in the Physical Geography
course fit together, what you should get out of them, and how you should approach
them.
Lectures will take up only a small proportion of your time studying Physical
Geography. You will also spend time in different types of class including practical
classes, tutorials and field classes, and a large part of your study will be independent
work based largely on recommended reading. Independent study, guided by your
tutors and lecturers, will play a major role in your acquisition of essential factual and
conceptual knowledge. Lectures are not the method by which you should expect to
learn most of your factual information. However, lectures are extremely important.
So what are the lectures for?
What are lectures for?
Most of the lectures are intended to focus your mind, point you towards the topics
you should be studying in detail through independent reading, and inspire your
interest. Lectures are like the glue that fixes together the different parts of your
learning, bringing ideas together to form a coherent understanding.

Lectures DO:

provide an organisational framework for the material that you are studying,

help you identify key topics, controversies and case studies

help to direct your independent reading, exploring and thinking

give you an opportunity to follow up any difficult or controversial issues that

you may have encountered in your reading,

provide case studies, examples and context,

give you an opportunity to ask questions and get answers,

help to inspire your developing interest and enthusiasm for the subject,

typically account for only a small proportion of the hours involved in any
module.

What are lectures not intended for?

Lecturing is not always a very effective way of passing factual information between a
speaker and an audience. That kind of straightforward information gathering can
usually be done more effectively by other means including practical activities, reading
and other types of classes. Therefore we dont use lectures as the main or sole
method of telling you stuff.
Lectures DO NOT:

repeat the basic factual information that you can get out of the text books,

provide all the material that you need to pass the module,

save you having to read, explore and think for yourself.

What is involved in a Lecture?

The core of a typical Physical Geography lecture is a period of about 50 minutes of
class engagement with a lecturer or a group of lecturers. This might involve some
amount of straightforward lecturing where the lecturer addresses the group, but is
likely also to also involve question-and-answer sessions (in both directions!), student
buzz-group discussions and a range of other activities. Different lectures will be run
in different ways to suit the needs of the group and the nature of the subject matter.
Usually it is important that students take notes during the lecture to help them identify
and remember the important points. You should write down big ideas, important

facts, specific advice or instructions, and any questions that occur to you. In addition
to this face-to-face contact, there may also be a range of additional resources
associated with each lecture, including set readings, self-assessment questions, and
activities on the Virtual Learning Environment.
Additional resources for each lecture on the VLE
For most Physical Geography lectures the lecturer will put appropriate resources into
a folder on the VLE to help you to do the work you need to do. These may include a
basic set of lecture prompts, some questions based on the material covered in the
lectures, set readings that you are expected to do, some questions based on that set
reading, and a list of topics that you are expected to research independently. Exactly
what is provided will depend on the nature of the individual lecture, and will be
explained to you within each module.
Lecture prompts: Where appropriate, lecturers will place a set of notes indicating the
outline content of the lecture, possibly with some of the pictures, graphs, tables or
other illustrations that are shown in the lecture. The idea of this is that you can print
out these prompts before the lecture and bring them with you as a starting point for
taking your own notes, and you can use them to save yourself copying down
complex diagrams or tables during the lecture. NB: YOU NEED TO TAKE
ADDITIONAL NOTES DURING THE LECTURE. The prompts are there to help you
focus your thoughts and your notes, not to replace your thoughts or your own notes!
The prompts will not usually cover every part of the lecture, so you must not rely on
the prompts instead of taking notes during the lecture.
Set Readings: For most lectures there will be one or more items of compulsory set
reading. These may be listed individually within the VLE or in the module handbook,
or they might be mentioned in the lecture itself: you must check. You must read set
material carefully as it will provide you with important factual or conceptual content
for the course.
Questions based on the lecture content or set reading: For some lectures we will give
you a few self-assessment questions. Some questions might be based specifically on
the lecture to help you to focus your attention during the lecture and to help you pick
out particular issues or details. You can use the questions to help you draw key
points out of your own lecture notes as you organise them after the lecture. Other

questions may be based on the set reading, and will help you focus on the key issues
within the set readings. You can look at the questions before you do the reading,
then try to develop the answers in your mind as you read. After you have done the
readings, make sure that you feel confident that you have an answer to the
questions. If you are not sure, you can discuss with your friends, with your tutor, or
with the lecturer. You can always ask questions in the lecture.
Topics for independent study: For some lectures, especially in 1st year, we will
provide you with a set of associated topics that you must research independently.
These may be technical terms, concepts, locations, significant individuals, or
geographical examples. You should use sources such as the course text books,
research journals, or discipline-specific dictionaries to find out about these topics.
You should always check your findings in a number of different sources.
It is important to keep up to date with the lecture-related resources on the VLE. The
lecturers will assume that you have done the reading and researched the
independent-study topics from the preceding lectures, and will base what they say in
each lecture on the assumption that you have done the set work. If you have done
the work you should find it easy to follow what the lecturer is talking about and keep
up with the course.

How to make the most of your lectures in Physical Geography

Before each lecture:

Look up the topic of the lecture in the course outline, and read anything you
can find on that topic in one of the basic textbooks. Take notes of what you
read and new information that you discover.

Print out the lecture slides or prompts if they are available. You can use the
prompts as a base and add on additional information that you found in the
textbooks.

Go through the prompts and identify any words you don't know or topics you
haven't encountered before.

Look up the new words in the Dictionary of Physical Geography or some

similar reference source. Add a brief definition or explanation to your notes, or
perhaps on your printout of the prompts.

Look up new topics in any of the basic textbooks or other books in the library
and make yourself familiar with them. Take notes of new information that you
discover

If there are places you don't know about mentioned on the lecture prompts
look them up in your atlas, on Google Earth, in the CIA World Factbook, or
whichever source of general geographical information you prefer.

If there are things you just can't find out about, make a note of them so that
you can listen out for an explanation in the lecture, or ask the lecturer about
afterwards.

Organise the notes that you've taken and reflect on what you have learnt and
what you are still unsure of.

Write down any specific questions to which you still want answers.

At each lecture:

Arrive prepared and alert. Listen and think. Take notes on what is said.

Annotate the lecture prompts with additional information provided by the

lecturer. You have to listen carefully for important points.

Listen out for answers to the questions you prepared before the lecture.

Take additional notes of key points, and any interesting information or ideas
that come up in the lecture.

Do not imagine that everything you hear and think will just stick in your
mind. Write it down or you will probably forget it when another interesting idea
comes along in a few minutes!

After the lecture:

As soon as possible, find a few minutes to read through the notes you took in
the lecture and write a short paragraph summarising the key points or major
ideas. This will force your brain to process the information, which will help

reinforce your learning. The summary will later on help you with revision.
Think of it like the abstract of a research paper.

Organise the notes you took in the lecture and merge them with the notes you
took before the lecture.

If new words or topics arose in the lecture, go and look them up in the
dictionary, textbook, etc, and write down what you learn about them.

Look at any questions or terms-to-learn provided for the lecture on the VLE.
Make sure you know the answer, and make sure you could EXPLAIN the
answer to somebody who hadn't been at the lecture.

Talk to friends about the lecture, and see if they picked up ideas that you
missed. Add their ideas into your notes.

Identify any specific reading that was recommended by the lecturer either in
the slides or during the lecture, and go and read what was recommended.
While doing so, try to relate what you read to the key points made in the
lecture. Add material from your reading into your notes. Your notes will now
include material from a range of sources, with the lecture providing a
structure onto which you can hang all that material.

At this stage many students like to reorganise their notes (which might have
got a bit messy), make a neat copy and perhaps highlight particular points.
Do whatever works well for your way of thinking.

Look at the list of essay questions in the module handbook and in past
exams, and think of ways in which the material associated with this lecture
could be used in an answer to each essay question.

Finally, if there are things you don't understand, or if you want more help,
speak to the lecturer, your personal tutor, or the course director.

Wider reading:
What we listed above was a basic routine that will keep you on top of the core course
material. If you still have time left, or if you want to take your study just a little bit
further, you should explore wider literature about the topic of the lecture.

Rather than just reading, reading and reading, remember to THINK about
what you read and to relate everything to the framework of notes and other
information that you have already accumulated. You will learn, understand

and remember things much better if you tie all your information together into a
bigger picture.

Journals such as "Progress in Physical Geography" (available on paper or

online through Keele Library) carry review articles on specific topics that will
carry you up towards more advanced levels of study. Browse through journals
like this, looking for interesting articles.

Textbooks on specific topics (glaciers, rivers, etc), rather than on the whole of
Physical Geography, will enable you to focus more closely on topics of
interest. Ask the lecturer for advice on advanced reading for specific topics.

Read, think and just look at the world around you with a curious professional
eye. Ask questions. Search for answers.