i am a first year commerce student. i am wondering if notes and other stuff will be posted online for my courses and if htey are.. which website should i check once school starts? webct?

It all depends on the prof. Some profs post everything, some post nothing. You won't know until your first class.

McMaster has two online learning systems you may be using: WebCT and Learnlink. Both are online, and both serve as a way for professors to post quizzes, test scores, lecture notes, and discussion boards online for your class. It all depends on the professor if they like using one or the other, or neither. Some courses also have their own website pages, or use Moodle, another online system.

However, not all profs post notes online. The ones that do, usually adds on hints and other notes about the topic that isn't posted unless you attend classes.

Indeed, one my my more favoured profs posted his notes online.

But he would purposefully stray from them at times so you attend class. Thus, you don't go to class, you miss out on important parts of the notes and don't do as well.

So far though, I've only had 5 or so profs that have posted notes.

This is one of those things that also varies massively by faculty - some seem to be much more predisposed to posting notes than others (e.g., science). I'd say the vast majority of my courses had their notes posted. Ultimately it's up to the prof, and I must say, once you've become accustomed to PowerPoint slides or notes being available beforehand to bring to class, you really resent it when a prof takes an 'ideological' stand and refuses to post them or only will post them after the lectures so you have to write everything down anyway.