natstar said:
Ah ur gonna have to see if this is allowed. Ive heard that some lectures dont like it becuase of interllectual property. In my 3 years at UWS ive never seen anyone record lectures. Lectures can be noisy, and not all lectures are in the big lecture halls that have mics, so if your in a smaller lecture where the lecturer just speaks, i doubt you could get a clear record.
Lectures are pretty standard. They just use pp slides, explain them and give examples. If you have the pp slides they are sufficient enough. Usually if theres anything important you should note that is not in the slides the lecture will tell you. Try to get any examples they mention down too, but honestly I see no need for a recorder
A lot of lecturers also don't because they don't like students not making the effort to turn up to class and then free loading of others - this is also the reason why they don't put recordings on webct, only the lecture slides or summaries usually.
I know a lot of law lecturers don't like it because it 's their personal works and they're happy to give you as a UWS student the full story behind their texts so to speak, but they don't want it just being out there for anyone to use. That and they konw people don't listen and are disruptive then too.
Busines lectuerrs are happy for you to record it seems, especially since they don't even konw you're doing it half teh time if you're in lecture halls but that said, you usually don't need to record those lectures coz the slides are good summaries. If you find you're needing to record so you can write down anything and everythingt hey say you probably need to review your note taking technique because most lectures half about 40% useful information, 60% b ackground/padding/additional info
EDIT: as far as noise levels - i only got a fairly cheap mini tape recorder thing - $90 i think 2 yrs ago? so would be cheaper now - as long as you get one that has the voice activiated thing on it - can't remember what it's called - you pick it up really clearly because the recorder sort of filters out background noise. Plus most lecturers use a microphone even in the small lecture rooms
especially at parra because the facilities are so much better now and even without a microphone the acoustics are good enough for you to hear clearly.