Hello everyone! Today I will blog about a normal day of lectures (and tutorials) here at Surrey!
As previously mentioned, this varies quite a lot from one subject to another, however I will try to keep it general to every subject (even though I do not have any info on arts and humanities degrees which may vary quite a lot from what I will write).
The biggest lectures are held on big lecture theaters, according to the number of student attending the course. There are quite a few big lecture theaters around surrey, with the biggest ones at Austin Pearce (AP) and at the Surrey Business school Buildings.
These theaters are very well equipped, coping with the number of people trying to understand a lecturer talk about complicated stuff! even if its 9am in the morning!. These have huge projectors together with top quality microphones, speakers and smart screens in which the lecturers can project videos, presentations, photos and live ‘presentations’ on. These are great! as we do not only get the lecture’s presentation (power point) but we get live work-out or examples by the Lecturer using this projector.
The seating on these are well spaced within each other and plenty of them available. These theaters are mostly used for an informative lecture with almost no participation of the students (other than the usual online ‘polls’ some lecturers may use) due to the number of people in the room.
There are smaller lecture theaters used for smaller classes or tutorials in which the students can get full feedback on the lectures and tutorials previously presented by the Lecturer. This is great as it is not just the Lecturer giving you personal feedback and helping you with your learning, but there are a couple of Post-graduate students helping you as well.
The Lecturers will always provide all the presentations and required information prior to the lecture itself, so you have enough time to print this in case you want to take notes or have the presentation on a written form. This is also ideal as these are stored on the online university website on which you can access all your lecture notes/tutorials and information at any given time (specially useful when revising). So in case you missed a lecture or could not take notes fast enough, the information will always be there.
Specific subjects have their own dynamic lectures/tutorials which greatly vary between each other (I only know of Engineers and Scientists). The Engineers usually have experiments and practical experience on a weekly basis using the Engineering Labs (theoretical and practical engineering experiments, most of it revolves on breaking stuff!!! quite fun). The Scientists (biology/chemistry/physics and so on) have something similar, however they have their own facilities and laboratories in which they perform their experiments (like growing ‘beautiful’ bacteria making it look like a Christmas tree, yep that happens every year).
Personally, I had great fun with these dynamic lectures! I got to break lots of stuff on my first year and acquired lots of hand-on experience learning to operate Engineering Machining tools (lathe, mill and drilling machines). On my second year we got to create our own robot from scratch (this was the case for mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers created a ‘plane’, the automotive engineers created a small RC race car and the medical engineers created a fully working mechanical hand). On my third year I am currently working together with Aero, mechanical and Automotive students on the Formula Student Car with Team SURTES which we will take up for competition next year representing the University of Surrey at an international competition.
There is lots going on at Surrey on a normal day and lectures play an important part on it. These are great and Lecturers are always helpful, looking to help you in the best possible way. The information and infrastructure is set for the students comfort, all the information and help is there to help the student in the best possible way.
