Why you should know about study materials 

Students in colleges and universities use books and other study materials for many reasons. These reasons include studying for assessments that come in the form of written examinations, research work for assignments and most often merely supplementing the understanding of the subject or concept taught during lectures. 

This therefore means that someone going to such institutions should be knowledgeable about the various study materials so that he/she could gauge and prepare for the cost of purchasing them and the gadgets that could be used to store and view them. As matter of fact, the cost of study materials is something important to fully understand before you go into school because it will prevent any surprises once you begin your course or program. At some point you will have to spend on either a smart phone/tablet with enough storage space or a laptop computer or both. You will also spend on some hard copy or soft copy books depending on what you are looking to go and study. 

The different study materials used by the students include prescribed and recommended textbooks for that course, PowerPoint presentations and pamphlets prepared by their lecturers, published research papers, scientific and social journals, and lecture videos. 

Textbooks 

Textbooks are the most frequently used study material. These may either be soft copy (accessible via gadgets such as phones, kindles and computers) or hard copy (print or physical books) in nature. In general, the soft copies are cheaper and often free. They are also more accessible and very easy to distribute using messaging and sharing applications. Soft copy books can usually be downloaded freely on websites but there are some books that are not available for free, and you must pay to download. Once downloaded, the book can be shared using flash disks, email, WhatsApp or sharing apps like SHAREit. This means that if a softcopy book is not free to download, you can contribute money with other friends who need it to buy one copy and share it amongst yourselves. On the other hand, print textbooks are quite hard to come by and can be quite expensive. Most of these books cost between K500 to K1, 500.  

You can try and purchase secondhand books from your seniors at a cheaper price than them getting brand new. Institutions may have some hardcopy and softcopy books in their libraries, but they are usually limited, or they could be old editions. Textbooks will either be prescribed or recommended by a lecturer and as such will contain information relevant for the level at which a student is and can therefore be trusted. At times, some textbooks are mandatory for you to buy them, hence you need to be ready for this when planning for your school expenses with your sponsor. You can ask students already studying what you want to study to have an idea of the requirements in this regard. 

Presentations and Pamphlets 

PowerPoint presentations and pamphlets, as earlier stated, are in most cases prepared by the lecturers and distributed to the students. This distribution may be done before the giving of a lecture, during or more commonly after the lecture has been given. For the fact that these are prepared by the lecturers themselves, these materials are free to be used by the students. Furthermore, they are a very good guide of what a lecturer might want the students to focus on even if the students are to do further reading. It is worth noting that having these PowerPoint presentations or pamphlets is not a substitute for attending lectures. This is because lecturers often make mention of very important points during lectures without including them in the presentations themselves. Presentations can also be downloaded on the internet or viewed from applications such as SlideShare which includes presentations on many topics posted/shared by different people. However, sometimes, lecturers can produce special study material that they sell to students, which in most cases are useful. 

Published papers and journals  

Published research papers, and scientific and social journals are frequently used for assignments when an argument requires referenced support. These papers and journals are written or published by individuals or groups with expertise on the subject and can therefore be trusted if obtained from a reputable platform. The papers and journals are either accessible online or in print (rare). Online resources can be free or require payment to be viewed. Examples of platforms where these can be found include Elsevier, PubMed, Academia.edu and ScienceOpen to list only a few. 

Lecture videos 

Lecture videos, compared to the other study materials, are a more passive way of studying per say. Some institutions create lecture videos for their students, especially distance education or part-time students. Students can access these videos on a student portal by login into the student account. However, most lecture videos are mostly acquired on the internet especially on the YouTube platform. These lecture videos are given by different people who may or may not be experts in the subject. They include in-depth lectures on a topic, reviews and summaries or memory aides. Since most of these are available on YouTube, there is no cost to view them except that one must have a working data bundle or Wi-Fi connectivity. Since these videos are not usually given by the actual lecturers, a student must be careful and ask which ones are reliable both in level of data content and accuracy of information.