It's been over twenty years from when I last attended university and therefore lectures. I've been doing a couple of easy certificates and workshops in this time, but nothing on that scale.
At least until summer the classes will be held online through video conferencing. I have a comfortable and well-equipped home office.
What would you recommend for taking notes, staying attentive, absorbing as much information as possible and being well prepared for the exams?
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ...
Firstly, examine your motives for doing this. Are you just looking to get the certification, or are you looking to acquire knowledge and skills? Keep this in mind at all time, because you will need to invest significant amounts of work, so your intent will matter.
Next, before the course starts, attempt previous papers. Don't expect to be able to do them, of course, but attempting them will prep your mind for the sort of information you'll be looking to acquire. Attempting previous papers in advance will make you more aware of the information you're given as it's given to you.
Then, set up a spaced repetition system ready for flashcard-style knowledge retention. You can use Anki, or Supermemo. I wrote my own CLI SR system in under 30 minutes, and I still use it every day for a wide range of things. Since I wrote it it's limited and frankly user-hostile, but I know how it works, how to use it, and can enhance it as needed.
When you take notes you are are looking for several outcomes:
* A body of knowledge to be revised;
* Cross-connections between items delivered at widely-spaced times;
* Fundamentals that affect everything, versus singletons that exist in isolation;
* etc
Take notes in an informal short form where it trivial to add cross-links. I use zim-wiki to take informal notes and dump information, then I wrote a TF-IDF script to append links between pages that might be related. Other systems exist to do similar things. The important thing is that it's fast to use, fast to rearrange, and fast to find related material.
Finally ... review, revise, rearrange, review, revise, rearrange, review, revise, rearrange, review, revise, rearrange, review, ...
Endlessly.
Your notes are not "Write-Only" ... they are there to capture the start-points of the knowledge you are looking to gain. The knowledge will become fluent when you use it, reference it, revise it, cross-link it, and apply it.
Once you have a system (mine is zim plus my TF-IDF mods, plus my DoubleMem spaced-repetition system) then use it. Constantly. Use it now. Try to memorise the periodic table, plus an interesting fact about every element. Memorise a poem, memorise a passage from a favorite book, read about and notes about the major historical events in the development of the odern Czech Republic.
So:
* Set up a basic system now;
* Use it for real;
* Fine tune it now;
* STOP TINKERING!
* Read past papers;
* Make notes of questions you can't answer;
* Read ahead;
* Allocate the time.
Feedback and comments on the above rant invited.