We’ve all been there. You are wandering into the university lecture hall at 9am in the morning, overtired, dehydrated, aimlessly checking your phone, and within the first ten minutes you become aware that you have no idea what the lecturer is talking about.
Unfortunately, this is a problem that is all too common with modern students and there are few easy fixes.
People’s attention spans vary hugely, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to staying focused which will work for everyone. However, there are a few helpful tips that are good rules to follow for anyone wondering how to concentrate in lectures.
1: Put your phone away
As the american educator Neil Postman famously predicted in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the exponential growth in the use of digital technology in the last few decades has dramatically shortened the average human attention span.
Mobile phones, and particularly the latest generation of smartphones, are designed to keep you glued to the screen by bombarding you with stimuli at every available opportunity. The buttons, clicks and visual icons that make up a smartphone interface are specifically designed to stimulate your neurons into producing Dopamine, the chemical compound that is released when you experience pleasure.
Once these dopamine pathways are fully formed in your brain, a ‘reward mechanism’ is formed which is very difficult to reverse.
According to a study by Washington State University, it only takes a single notification from your smartphone to stop you from paying attention to a task. So if you want to stop yourself from becoming yet another ‘digital goldfish’, put those phones away. It will usually just end up prompting irrelevant ideas and instigating daydreaming in the lecture hall.
2: Sit at the front (or in the middle)
There are plenty of reasons why sitting at the front of the class dramatically increases the likelihood that you will stay focused in lectures. But the most important of these is that it solves a similar problem to turning off your phone, it eliminates visual distractions and allows for greater concentration.
Sitting at either the back or along the sides of a lecture theatre has a negative impact on your ability to pay attention as it obscures your view of the lecturer and the presentation and diminishes your grasp of the subject matter. Sitting along the front and centre rows minimises the impact of peripheral distractions such as other students, people walking in and out of the lecture theatre, and any outside noise. Sitting in the front row leaves you in a prime position to hear the lecture and keep you engaged.
Back in the 1970s, the American Sociologist F.D Becker first identified the ‘T Zone’ that is perfect for staying focused in lectures. This is a Goldilocks area for staying focused that includes the first two rows at the front as well as the middle of the classroom. Studies have found that people who sit in the T Zone also get better grades, enjoy their lectures more and have a greater affinity with the subject matter than those who sit at the back of the class. So this one is a no-brainer if you ever need an incentive to pay attention.
3: Make Notes
Most people are kinaesthetic, or physical learners. They learn and stay focused by doing. In a University lecture, this is very hard to do, and that is really the reason why most students only ever retain 5% of what they hear in a lecture. For the most part, everything you hear in a lecture will be new information. The Brain often struggles to process and make sense of this new information if yet more information is constantly bombarding it. Lectures can therefore be very tricky to keep up to speed with even if you usually have no difficulty paying attention.
Making notes creates an active neural link between the information you hear in a lecture and a physical task, actively improving your understanding and retention of the subject. Recording lecturer material in your notes has the added benefit of making it easier to prepare for post-class revision and exams. Pay attention to how your notes are formulated, ensuring that they are concise, efficient and easily understandable. There is plenty of useful information online concerning which methods of note-taking are likely to be most helpful for helping you to concentrate in lectures while also producing useful material.
If you are a visual learner, you may want to use concept maps in your note-taking. This will allow you to make highly effective visual information, such as diagrams, flowcharts, and tables, which will help you better understand the subject matter.
If you have difficulty concentrating in lectures due to the speed at which lecturers deliver information, you might want to check out effective note-taking methods such as charting and outlining. These methods are designed to accommodate those who have difficulty staying focused and are highly effective at improving concentration and grades.
How to concentrate in lectures
If all else fails and you’re still struggling to concentrate, don’t panic, universities understand this problem and are also on the case. Nowadays, particularly after the Coronavirus pandemic, most university lectures in the UK will be recorded as a matter of protocol and will be available online.
Going over material after the lecture in this way will be incredibly useful to you, helping you to pick up on details that you missed and garner a better understanding of the subject matter. Going over the lecture again once you have done reading around the topic is incredibly useful, as it will help you formulate quick, concise summaries of the information that will be useful for exams and essay writing.
Written by Christian Round
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