Not-so-needed for IIUM Biomedical Science Students

Textbook
I have seen many instances of textbooks that became nothing but accessory on the rack. Considering the thickness of the books and uncountable yet valuable knowledge inside that book that is not fully and smartly used by the buyer, to me it’s a complete waste of money. You can name a price for a book that is only 3cm thick but it costs more than RM100++!

Photocopy of lecture note
Try your best not to print your lecture notes, but instead ask from the lecturer the softcopy of the presentation. From there you can read and make your own summary of the note and it’ll be personally handier than a compilation of A4 paper that you have to bring here and there but yet not read and used. Moreover, you can at least contribute to save the environment by minimizing the use of papers.

Lecture notes from senior
I repeat, lecture notes. Not lab report and assignments. For lecture notes, every year, there’ll be usually new lecturers who teach that particular subject and they have their own notes to be given to students as references. Even some have added or changed a little bit of the contents of the subject based on their method of lecture delivery and objective of teaching.

As alternative, what should you do?

Easy and Ready Internet Connection
You can name a number of services provided by Celcom, Maxis, DiGi, Streamyx etc that are related to internet connection which you can subscribe and use it like the world have no boundaries! Once you have it, it’s like you’ve bought thousands of textbook since there are uncountable academic websites that you can use to revise and refer to.

Personal Computer
Nowadays it’ll be hard to cater the need to study for university students if you do not have personal computer. For all lecture notes given by your lecturers, you must ask the softcopy for your revision. As I said above, minimize the use of printed lecture notes and revise the notes using your computer and make summary your own way.

Recent lecture notes
Never miss even one lecture note from each end of class. Make sure you ask for a copy from your lecturer. It is also advised for you to open a virtual group in the internet like YahooGroups so that no one would miss any of the lecture notes and to make it downloadable anytime and anywhere.

This entry has been reproduced in http://www.iiumbloggers.com