All Students

Textbooks: How do you get around the issue of cost?

Reading lists come and go, but the books you buy are likely to stay with you for a while.

Some of the books I bought in my first year are still mine and I’m glad I was told to buy them.  Other books seemed a waste of time and money.  Another set of books served a purpose, but didn’t need to be kept after their initial use.

photo by marzbars

photo by marzbars

Academic books often cost a lot more than a brand new work of fiction in hardback.  Worse, they are almost never discounted like the fiction books.  But we still need them to get through our studies.

One alternative option is to grab a downloaded version of the textbook you need.  A lot of these publications cost almost as much as the physical product anyway, so what’s the point in saving a pint’s worth of month when you were hoping for enough to afford a bottle of fine malt whisky?  Perhaps electronic book publishing needs a new approach.

There is a growing culture of downloading electronic versions of textbooks illegally for free, but even that doesn’t impress many students to the point of satisfaction.  It isn’t great working from a computer screen and electronic books aren’t easy to browse in the same way a hard copy is.

Given the choice, many students still want a physical book in their hands.  No matter how much reading material I find online, the greatest satisfaction is through a product I can actually flick through.  @seawolf and @amy_runner agreed when I asked on Twitter how students prefer to work…from traditional textbooks and face-to-face lectures, or from electronic resources and virtual seminars:

seawolf – “Real always.  Paper and face-to-face.”

amy_runner – “I prefer traditional textbooks and face-face lectures, easier to read and more interaction makes it more engaging.”

Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Education also discovered that teenagers prefer traditional teaching methods, which includes using physical textbooks, rather than electronic alternatives.  It seems that while we love making use of technology, there is a tendency to go back to basics when studying.  Technology complements traditional methods of learning, it doesn’t replace it.

So what can you do to get the actual textbook without having to spend big time?

  1. Buy secondhand – You don’t have to buy new.  There is a lot of choice on sites like Amazon and abebooks.  There are others, but these two sites have generally found me what I need.
  2. Use other students – Speak to people in the year above who may have finished with certain textbooks and offer to buy them cheaply.  If you don’t need to own the book, ask to borrow it until the end of the module or academic year…you never know!
  3. Ask for a discount – As a student, your NUS Extra card can help you find discounts at some bookshops.  Even when you’ve got a definite discount like this, there’s no harm in asking for an extra discount.  Some shops are able to offer more money off when you ask, and you haven’t lost anything if they say ‘no’.  Worth a go.  Remember to smile sweetly…
  4. To the library – When you don’t need to keep your own copy of a book, see if the library holds a copy.  Best do this early on, before all copies of the book get taken out.  If it’s a very popular title, see how long you can keep the book.  If it’s only going to be in your hands for a week, but your module lasts a term, you clearly need a different plan!
  5. Try local libraries –  It might be a long shot in some cases, but you never know what a local library can do if you don’t try.  Most local libraries have stock searches on the web, so you can see if they have a copy without even leaving your seat.
  6. Consider an old edition of the textbook – If you don’t need the most up to date edition (unfortunately, sometimes you do), then you can save money by opting for the previous edition.  There’s more chance that book will be available secondhand too (see No. 1).

Other than this, how do we get around the issue of cost?  Not easily, is the unfortunate answer.  I don’t dare think how much money I had to spend on books at uni.  Too much is all I know.  And I didn’t even have it bad. None of my books were more than about £40.  I know people who had to spend more than £100 on a single tome!

If you’ve managed to get a physical textbook at a great discount (or even free), help us out with your tips in the comments.  You could make some skint students happy!

photo by Wesley Fryer

photo by Wesley Fryer

Go further than reading

It doesn’t matter how much you read and how many inspirational quotes you consume.  If you don’t analyse what you’re reading and you fail to critically engage with the texts, you won’t reap the rewards.

Photo by Chaparral [Kendra]

Put your feet up…and ENGAGE with the text… Photo by Chaparral (Kendra)

Reading the study advice on this site and elsewhere may help you gain an insight into effective ways of working, but it doesn’t fit into place just because you’ve read about it.  Again, it requires action on your part to succeed.

Picture the following situation:

You were given an assignment a month ago and you thought there was more than enough time to write it up.  Now there’s just a day to go before it’s due in and you’ve done almost nothing toward it.  You’ve read the books and been to the lectures, sure, but you’ve still got to get the essay written.

So you work the whole day and most of the night on this assignment.  Your head hurts, you dose up on caffeine and you just want it all to end.

Finally it does.  You finish the essay and get it handed in.  Not a bad job, considering.

Yeah…considering.  But you know, deep down, you could have done a lot better here.

Do you recognise yourself in that situation?

This behaviour is dangerous.  You probably know that.

But it still happens.

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5 Qualities to Successful Leadership Through NOT Leading

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed those people in life who seem to achieve whatever they like with total ease and confidence.  It’s as if they were born leaders.

When you watch someone like this in action, it’s clear that they don’t need to boss people around, they don’t need to labour the point, and they don’t show desperation in trying to persuade others.  It just comes naturally.

What’s so striking about these individuals, however, is their approach to leadership.  A successful leader DOES NOT act like a leader.  Their success can be attributed to an open and friendly approach.

Follow the leader... (photo by Marloes*)

Others feel truly valued and respected, which encourages them to follow.  Leading is not about managing others; instead, leading opens up the possibilities for all involved.

Five common qualities of leaders stand out in particular.  As you’ll see, they look outward to the wants and needs of others, rather than inwardly to their own, private goals.  Yet through this approach, a leader can achieve their private goals with an enviable ease.

With these five qualities, you could be on the way to greater achievement too.  They are:

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Group(s) Work: Forum Groups & the Benefits of a Wise Crowd

friends (photo by duchesssa)

I wish I’d done this more. However much you love or hate working in a normal study group, an open mind can lead to great benefits with a ‘Forum Group’.

Study groups usually consist of a few students:

  • working toward a presentation;
  • revising together for moral support;
  • attempting to answer particular questions that have been given to them.

Forum groups go a bit further. The idea is to:

  • freely discuss open-ended ideas and concepts;
  • bounce questions off each other;
  • develop critical thinking/arguing skills;
  • ask specific questions and request help on topics that are confusing;
  • use the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to get more from a collective partnership.

The main requirement for a Forum Group is to form a team of students who wish to give a bit of their study time to rounding their knowledge, expanding their mind, uncovering common difficulties and stumbling blocks, and getting answers to questions that are bugging them.

people (photo by datarec)

Oversized Forum Group…they won’t all fit in your room.

Even when a Forum Group finds an issue that every member is having trouble with, the strength in numbers not only highlights the point, it also gives a tutor clear reason to put the points across in a more helpful way (hopefully!) when much of the class require answers to the same questions.

But don’t lose all hope that you won’t stumble across the right answers.  The larger a group is, the more unknowingly wise they can be as a collective unit.

In his book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds‘, James Surowiecki discusses how large groups of people can be scarily accurate.  The reason why?  Because as individuals, people don’t have all the data to make a decision, but together, all the information (or a great deal more, anyway) is there.  The info isn’t given to everyone, it just happens to make the average amazingly accurate.

According to Surowiecki, there are 4 conditions that characterise a wise crowd:

  1. Diversity of opinion (each person should have some private information, even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts) – Even if your study isn’t based on hard facts, you need to take in a multitude of opinions.  If you can argue against opposing arguments, you’re a lot closer to having a well-rounded argument yourself…even if everyone else can make a feasible argument against your ideas too.  [I hope that makes sense.  Please tell me off in the comments if I’m talking nonsense!]
  2. Independence (people’s opinions are not determined by the opinions of those around them) – At first, you won’t have been involved in discussion.  Your opinion was new and forming in your own mind.  When you come to the table to discuss your opinions, you will not have been swayed (yet).  A Forum Group can shape ideas further, so each person’s independence begins to form even stronger ideas.
  3. Decentralisation (people are able to specialise and draw on local knowledge) – While you’re better than all your friends at some things, they will be better than you at others.  Similarly, you will hold certain information that is unique to the group that you’re working in.  If you all share what you know, you may come out the other side with an increased understanding of certain subjects, as will your peers.
  4. Aggregation (some mechanism exists for turning private judgements into a collective decision) – While we all have our own thoughts, a Forum Group can open up what you’re thinking and allow others to build on it.  This allows all parties to gain and brings your private ideas into a public arena, which could ultimately become collectively agreed by everyone.  There might be some minor tweaking along the way, but that’s all part of the fun.  This doesn’t necessarily work if there’s too much conflict in the Forum Group, but that doesn’t matter either.

With these four conditions, a group can achieve good accuracy.

Fair enough, a Forum Group is unlikely to be more than a handful of people.  Nonetheless, a meeting of minds can prove beneficial, no matter how many people attend.  From 2 to 2000, there’s a lot of scope.

Groups work for some people and totally fail for others.  But the word ‘group’ has so many meanings that it’s worth trying out different types of ‘group’ in case you spot a winner for you.

At the beginning of this post, I said I wish I’d participated in Forum Groups more.  That’s mainly because I like to hear other people’s ideas.  I find it opens up my mind and brings out so many things that would never have occurred to me as an individual.

It also puts me in my place when I’m wrong.

In general, regularly working alone is crucial to gaining a good degree, but you’d be mad if you ignored working with others entirely.  Anyway, pretty much any employment looks for team working skills, so don’t get caught out on your own!

[Stop press, etc: I wrote this article before Cal published a similar – yet totally different and amusing – post over at Study Hacks.  He talks about forming a ‘Productivity Junta‘.  Not only is ‘Junta’ a fantastic word, but it’s also an opportunity to enjoy “intoxicatingly quaffable beer-coffee mixture”.  I suggest you check it out for even more ideas…and to find out how to become a legend like Benjamin Franklin.]