What to write in a lecture, a tute, a prac and on placement

Short answer first: each class type at an Australian university does a different job, so each needs a different note. In a lecture, UNSW's guide says to capture key concepts, examples, definitions and your own questions rather than transcribe. In a tutorial, write down the gaps in your understanding, because participation can be marked, up to 10 per cent of a unit at Western Sydney and 15 per cent at UNE. A lab notebook is a bound, dated record in permanent ink on Newcastle's rules. On clinical placement, UTS's nursing guide prohibits recording and photos, and identifiable patient information does not go home with you.

The lecture is the one room on that list where recording pays off, and this comparison of lecture recording apps covers Notibo, which records on a laptop, writes the transcript and the notes, and gives the first 14 days of Pro free without a card.

This article walks through a week of those rooms, from the lecture theatre to the ward and the workplace. The definitions come from the universities, and the names vary between them, so check your unit outline for the words your own university uses. Whether you may record a class is a separate question with its own article.

What kinds of class will be on your timetable?

Your timetable mixes several class types, and each university names and describes them its own way. UQ publishes a definition for every teaching activity type, Melbourne explains its classes to new students, and UniSC answers the question on its help pages. The general habits of good notes are in effective note-taking. This article is about matching the note to the room.

• A lecture is large and mostly one-way. Melbourne's guide to attending classes says lectures may range from 30 to 300 students and take 1 to 3 hours of a subject's week, with little interaction and important administrative and assessment information. UQ's list of teaching activity types calls a lecture structured engagement with an expert in the field.
• A tutorial is small and built for discussion. Melbourne's tutes usually run 60 to 90 minutes with 15 to 20 students and are often compulsory, with participation and preparation requirements. UQ adds that many courses have one weekly tutorial.
• Workshops and seminars sit in between. UQ says a workshop is more practical and interactive than a lecture and usually larger than a tutorial. Melbourne's seminars usually run at least 2 hours, are common in higher-level subjects, and may require you to research and present.
• Pracs, labs and studios are hands-on. UQ describes practicals as relating theory to practice with equipment, techniques and analysis, and studios, usually in design and architecture, as classes for activities such as drawing and model making. At UniSC, laboratories are practical classes held in a computer, science, sport or nursing lab.
• Placements put you in a workplace. UQ defines a placement as time embedded in a work environment under an industry professional's supervision, and clinical teaching as small-group teaching that may involve patients and requires sensitivity, confidentiality and discretion.

Count your hours by type in week one. A timetable with two lectures, a tutorial and a three-hour prac calls for three kinds of note, and one notebook method will not serve all of them. If a disability or a health condition changes what you can do in any of those rooms, the formal route is in academic adjustments in Australia.

What should you write in a lecture?

The lecture is the room most note-taking advice was written for, and UNSW's guide to lectures is specific about it, starting before you sit down.

• Set up the page first. UNSW suggests heading each page, or a laptop template, with the date, the week and lecture number, the lecture title and the course name, and downloading the slides beforehand so you can annotate a printout.
• Listen for the structure. The guide points to introductory remarks for the big picture, verbal signposts such as "To sum up", and the final summary that ties ideas together and previews what comes next.
• Do not transcribe. UNSW says to balance note-taking with listening, focus on the main points and the overall argument, and use the slides as an outline while you listen for the details the lecturer adds.
• Know what belongs in the notes. Its list is key concepts and main points, important examples, definitions and new terms, references from the lecturer, anything you find confusing, and your own thoughts and questions.

The slides already exist, so your note earns its place by holding what they do not: the example worked through out loud, the reason behind a step, the reading mentioned in passing. Put a mark in the margin wherever you lose the thread, and keep going. At Melbourne, each subject's LMS space holds lecture documents and recordings of class content. Whether you may make your own recording is covered in recording lectures in Australia.

The same-day review

Read the page once, on the day. Turn each margin mark into a question, look up the new terms, and write three lines at the bottom on what the lecture argued. UNSW tells you to review your previous lecture notes before the next lecture, because topics link up, and that only works if the page still makes sense a week later. Which classes still take a roll, and what happens when yours does, is in lecture attendance at Australian universities.

What goes in your notes from a tutorial?

A tutorial is not a smaller lecture. UNSW's guide to tutorials says they are much more interactive, so you are expected to do more than receive information and take notes. It also says all UNSW courses record tutorial attendance, many set a minimum number you must attend to pass, and tutorials often contain assessable components such as quizzes and participation marks.

• Prepare questions, not a summary. UNSW asks you to review the most recent lecture notes, note down questions and plan at least one brief contribution before you arrive.
• Write down the gaps. During the class, the guide says to jot down the main ideas but focus on filling gaps in your knowledge, and on what you find interesting, important or confusing.
• Finish the page afterwards. Its after-class steps are to revise your tutorial notes, research new words and concepts while they are fresh, and work out whether a remaining gap needs more reading or a question to your tutor.

A good tutorial page is short: the question you brought, the answer you left with, the point in a worked problem where your answer and the tutor's split, and anything said about an assessment task, word for word. Keep a running list of your own repeated mistakes across the semester. By the study break that list tells you what to revise first, and it feeds straight into exam preparation at Australian universities.

Participation marks

Tutorials are often assessed, and several universities limit how much the talking can count. The weighting and the criteria for your unit are in its outline.

• ANU says 5 or 10 per cent, usually. ANU's page on tutorials says participation, where it counts, is usually 5 or 10 per cent of the course mark, is based on how you contribute rather than on attendance, and is allotted by tutors, so ask in the first tutorial how the marks are distributed.
• Western Sydney caps it at 10 per cent. Its assessment policy allows no more than 10 per cent of the marks in any unit for general class participation, rules out marks for attendance alone, and requires explicit criteria in the Learning Guide.
• UNE caps it at 15 per cent. UNE's assessment procedures say assessed participation shall not be worth more than 15 per cent of the aggregate mark, with the criteria made explicit, and that no marks are allocated for attendance.
• Melbourne counts activity as well as presence. Melbourne's advice on participating in class says many subjects give a percentage of the final grade for tutorial participation, and that it reflects how active you are, not only whether you came.

So the mark follows what you say. Write your planned contribution at the top of the tutorial page before class, and tick it off once you have made it.

What changes in a workshop, seminar or studio?

These three are the least standard, and the name on your timetable can cover quite different classes. UQ calls the workshop format very flexible, with discussion, interaction, haptic learning, presentation and debate, and UniSC says its workshops may involve more hands-on learning while still leaving room for discussion and debate.

In a workshop, write down the method rather than the content. Note the steps in the order you practised them, and the point where your own attempt went wrong. The content itself is usually in the lecture or the readings already, and the workshop is where you find out whether you can use it.

A seminar asks more of you before it starts. Melbourne says seminars may require students to research and present content to the class, and UQ notes that seminars might be student seminars. Before a seminar, write one page with the reading's main claim, its evidence and your question about it. During it, record objections to your view in the words used, and circle the question nobody answered, because that is where next week starts.

In a studio, where UQ says students undertake activities such as drawing and model making, the note is a record of decisions. Date each version, write down the feedback you got and who gave it, and add one line on what you changed and why. Melbourne lists journals and folios among the follow-up tasks for labs, pracs and studios, and those are written from exactly this record.

What has to be in a lab notebook?

A lab notebook is marked like an assignment and kept like a record. At UQ, the Semester 1, 2025 course profile for Experimental Chemistry 1 (CHEM2054) made the lab notebook a pass or fail hurdle: a professional standard notebook with numbered pages, brought to every lab session and viewed at various times during semester. Spiral-bound books and books with removable pages were not accepted.

The University of Newcastle's laboratory notebook guidelines, written for research under the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, set out the full standard.

• Bound, with numbered pages. Pages are numbered consecutively, blank sections are struck through with a single diagonal line, and every entry page carries a date.
• Permanent ink, written as you go. Entries go in ballpoint pen while the experiment is carried out, and results are entered immediately.
• Purpose, plans and terms. Each experiment states its purpose, new ideas and plans are recorded, and non-standard terms and abbreviations are defined.
• Errors stay visible. A wrong entry is struck through with a single line, never erased, and correction tape and fluid are not used. The correction goes on the current page, with a reference back to the error and the reason.
• Enough to repeat it. The notebook should let someone with the right expertise understand what was done and reproduce the experiment from what is recorded.

Your unit's lab manual decides which of these it marks, so read it in week one rather than at the first check.

A bench routine

1. Before the prac. Write the date, the title, the purpose and the page reference in the lab manual, so the book shows what you set out to do.
2. At the bench. Record what you actually did, including any change from the manual and the reason for it, with quantities, units and times.
3. As results arrive. Enter each reading straight into the book, and describe anything unexpected in a full sentence.
4. Before you leave. Strike through the unused space, check that someone else could repeat the work from the page, and note the one result you cannot yet explain. The discussion section of your report starts there.

What can you write down on a clinical placement?

On placement the rules come from the health service, the university and the profession, and they are stricter than anything in a lecture theatre. UTS's clinical placement guide for nursing students is a clear example.

• Phones stay in your bag. UTS says mobile phones should be stored in bags, not carried, and that recording conversations or taking photos with phones is strictly prohibited.
• Patient information does not go home. Its list of breaches includes taking identifiable patient information home, handover sheets included, which go in a confidential documents bin before you leave the ward. Taking or sharing photos or videos of patients, staff or placement sites is on the same list.
• The duty outlasts the placement. UTS says the confidentiality requirements continue after the placement ends, and a breach can lead to exclusion from the placement or a referral for student misconduct.
• Other universities set the same line. JCU tells placement students using social media not to post pictures of patients, clients or procedures, or discuss case studies, that might identify the people involved. UQ's medical school says never to discuss a patient by name with anyone not entitled to the information, or in lifts and corridors where others can hear.

Do not record on placement, and do not photograph anything. What you can keep is your own record of what you learned, written so that nobody in it could be identified.

The placement notebook

• Learning, not people. Write down the condition, the procedure and the question to ask your facilitator. Leave out names, initials, bed numbers and dates of birth.
• Reflection on the day. Note what you did, what you would change and what you need to look up before your next shift.
• Nothing copied from the record. UTS says clinical records may only be accessed to provide patient care, and students who need patient files for study must first get approval from the nurse unit manager, their Clinical Facilitator and the patient.
• A notebook that stays with you. Not a shared drive and not a group chat. UTS lists sharing patient information through social media as a breach.

How do you keep notes on work-integrated learning?

Work-integrated learning covers more than health placements. ACU describes WIL as integrating the theory of learning with the practice of work, and says it also goes by placement, professional experience, clinical education or internships. Griffith lists work placements, internships and projects, says WIL is embedded in many of its programs, and notes that it can earn credit towards your degree.

If the unit is assessed by a report or a reflection, you will write it from notes kept during the placement, not from memory afterwards. Keep those notes like this.

• Keep a dated log. One entry per day or shift, with the tasks you did and who supervised them, in a line or two.
• Tag entries against the assessment. If your unit outline lists what the placement is assessed on, mark each entry with the point it gives you evidence for.
• Write the reflection weekly. A short paragraph on something that worked differently from the classroom version, while the detail is still fresh.
• Mark what is confidential. If the host organisation has confidentiality rules, note at the time which work they cover, so the report is written from the rest.

How do you bring a week of notes together?

By Friday, one unit can leave you with a lecture page, a tutorial page and a prac entry that never refer to each other. The table below is the week at a glance, and the routine under it joins the pages up. The last column is our advice, not a rule: your university's policy decides whether you may record, and the article on recording lectures linked above sets those policies out.

The weekly page

1. Test yourself on last week's questions first. Answer them from memory before you write anything new.
2. Lay the week's pages side by side. Lecture, tutorial and prac, in the order they happened, with the week's topic from the unit outline at the top.
3. Cross out what repeats. If your lecture page says what the slides say, keep the slide number and drop the rest.
4. Write what is still unclear as questions. One per line, with where the answer should come from: the reading, the tutor or the lab manual.

Those questions are the start of revision. Turning them into cards is covered in flashcards from notes, and answering them each week leaves the study break for practice rather than first reading. The apps students reach for at that step are compared in revision apps for Australian students.

Where Notibo fits

Notibo is for the room where one person speaks and you have permission to record. It records a lecture on a computer, or takes an audio file you upload, and returns a transcript, structured notes and flashcards with spaced repetition. It also turns PDF, PPTX and DOCX files into notes and flashcards, which covers the lecture slides and a prac's pre-reading. It transcribes 89 languages, and the transcript is in the language spoken.

The first 14 days of Pro are free, with 240 minutes of recording and no card. When the trial ends, the free plan gives 30 minutes of recording a month. Pro is 9.99 euro a month or 88.99 euro a year, billed in euro with the local amount shown at checkout. One recording can run for up to two hours, uploads are capped at 50 MB, and the transcript and notes export as PDF or Word.

Files are stored in the EU, and transcription runs on US processors under standard contractual clauses. It has no place on a ward, in a clinic or in any room where people have not agreed to be recorded. In the tutorial, the prac, the studio and on placement, the notebook is still yours to keep. More on the recording side is at lecture recording.