I just realized that sitting in a lecture, copying down notes and looking them over later isn’t the best way for me to learn. When I was a kid, I was always reading something, which is most likely the best way I learn: sitting down with a book and my thoughts. As we all know, some professors cannot teach for their life and the students are forced to learn concepts on their own, which is where I thrive. With resources such as MOOCs and books, is it worth me going to lectures anymore?
What subject?
I am a computer science major, so this is about my calculus and discrete math class. I have noticed that even in my java courses, I could’ve learned more from a book than in the hour and fifteen minutes in class.
This is more or less the story for many academically self driven students in college.
Lectures are really… kind of pointless.
Not to bash lectures but I understand what you mean.
Last year, the student with the highest score for my math class only attended 1 lecture.
And last year, I was able to ace my physics without having gone to most lectures 2nd semester.
The truth is, lectures are kind of pointless. Maybe for some it is really helpful but I found it that both my friends and I think otherwise.
However, you are paying a huge sum for those lectures. Do what you think is best.
Take the action that will help your learning the most. College is more or less like a degree paper that validates your intelligence to others than anything else especially considering research universities tend to not have the greatest lecturers.
Ehh, anyways from my experience:
Calculus = You can literally self study the final in 1 night and still ace it.
Discrete Math = Pretty self explanatory…
Intro Java course = Textbooks are usually really really detailed and helpful
So ya, I guess what you feel is normal. After all, in most lectures, after like a month, it gets pretty empty… and it’s because students are mostly either lazy or realize the lectures are pointless.
That said, feel free to disagree with me guys. I just personally think lectures aren’t really helpful just like him and I am in more advanced classes… 
And I think I did bring up this issue once in a post about how research universities not having the greatest professors and I was kind of blackmailed in that university forum (which is strange cause I wasn’t lying) by how much of a liar I was. Weird that the university I posted on was my own university which I take huge pride on… I mean, I wasn’t lying or anything. But it just seems to be a taboo to admit many university research professors aren’t really the best lecturers. Especially in STEM in which many recent professors are from Asia who seem to not be the greatest in speaking english (I have huge respect for their works but the point of undergrad lectures is to be able to help learn undergrad students on the subject, not bring demotivation on the subject by having professors who can’t put coherent english on a lecture hall)
At my school, except for the classic textbook subjects like math, physics, etc etc, lectures are very important and helpful: most of my classes don’t even use a textbook.
@AccCreate Interesting on the programming. I have found that of all the textbooks, programming textbooks are easily the least useful. Lectures, labs, and homework are 10x more useful. Not one of my (so far 7) CS classes has had a required textbook.
If you don’t feel the need for lectures in the classic textbook subjects, skipping most classes is probably just fine.
@PengsPhils
That’s very surprising to hear.
For me, it’s more of:
+lower level math classes (Calc1 to DiffEq) not needing lecture
+higher level proof based math classes needing lecture (well, not really the lecture but the notes because math textbooks tend to be too dry and the professor)
+physics classes not needing lecture and textbook (because all the problems are on internet or on presentations)
+most humanities needing lecture because “it’s humanities”. Knowing your professor’s thoughts on a topic can be pretty helpful on essays or exams.
+most other science classes not needing lecture (including computer science) since well, I don’t know, I just never saw how much a professor could add on to the surplus of info on the web.
I’m surprised at what you think of the textbooks for comp sci. But then again, it could be that my professor makes exams heavily oriented to terms and minor topics in textbook reading so I think a textbook is better for exams (for me).
That said, I do agree homeworks are 10x more useful than textbooks. Homeworks I think in CS is the most important.
And as for labs, I can’t comment. I have mixed feelings with those. I somewhat think they are waste but that’s also the period in which I can ask the TAs for help on topics I thought I understood but didn’t.
As for lectures, I don’t know. The professors I have currently just reads straight from his presentation slide word per word and the slides are up there so…
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Wow, very different CS experiences. Nearly all of my exams have you hand-write code, and there is little to no care for vocabulary.
For lectures, any power point is usually some code, and then the professor discusses and walks us through it, often writing 5x more than what is on the slides. And only 2 of my 7 CS classes so far even have powerpoints. The rest just write code (some based off lecture outlines) or do other code related things (in algorithms we do a combination of pseudocode and mathematical proofs).
Labs, I could tend to agree. It depends on the lab, but it is a situation of you get out what you put in. Done right, they can be just as good as homework, if not better because of TA help and explanation easily available (though for homework, all my classes use Piazza).
Beyond CS, I certainly agree. But at least for me, CS is very different. If I may ask, what school do you go to?
The issue of whether you needed to attend lectures was discussed in one of my classes, and the professor said that even if you didn’t understand the lectures, you should still show up. He (or she… I can’t exactly remember) mentioned that studies had been done and it was found that people who attended class did better than those who didn’t, even if they didn’t feel they were getting anything out of the lectures. I think the prof was right.
I always zoned out five minutes into CS and math lectures. I learned from reading the textbooks and doing the homework. Even then I felt like I barely had a grasp of the material, and it wasn’t until I left school and started applying what I’d learned to applications on the job that I felt like I began to understand what was taught.