Gleim CIA Review -- Plus, Gleim CIA Discount (Our Exclusive One)! - YouTube

Hello everyone, and welcome to another video by I Pass the CIA Exam.

The website IPasstheCIAExam.com was created by Stephanie Ng, CPA.

Stephanie is a published CPA Exam Guide Author, webinar leader, CIA expert, CFO,

and is highly respected in the accounting space.

IPasstheCIAExam.com is the #1 community for CIAs and CIA candidates.

And today, we’re so pleased to be able to share with you an unboxing of CIA Prep materials from Gleim.

And stay tuned to the end when I share an exclusive Gleim CIA Discount!

Operating for more than 40 years, Gleim has positioned itself as an industry-standard

in CPA review materials with over 1 million CPA Exams passed using their courses.

Let’s go ahead and open this box to see what’s inside.

Oh

That’s a cool surprise.

I’m not sure if you can tell from a video,

but it’s a heavy duty, thick canvas.

I definitely feel like this is strong enough to hold books for sure.

It’s got multiple pockets and is embroidered with the Gleim logo on the front. Awesome.

And it looks like they’ve also given us this flyer for a Free Accounting Career Guide.

It says:

”Choosing the right path is key to success.

Start exploring the different opportunities with our new Careers in Accounting booklet,

which serves as a comprehensive introduction to:

Early career-prep opportunities for students

The CPA, CMA, CIA, and EA designations

Certification exam requirements

Salary outlooks and careers

Exam review materials and resources

and more

There’s a link at the bottom, but I won’t read it now

because I’ll go ahead and add that for you in the video description below.

Ok, onto the next (and really the most exciting)

piece of this unboxing:

the review books!

These books are going to be indispensable to you

as you prepare for the CIA.

Here we’ve got Part 1: Essentials of Internal Auditing.

Let’s take a quick peek inside at the table of contents.

Ok, it’s got 7 Study Units,

I’ll just go ahead and highlight some of these topics.

It covers Foundations of Internal Auditing,

Governance, Risk Management, Fraud Risks and Controls,

and several other core subjects.

Let’s take a look at book 2.

The second part of Gleim’s CIA Review book series is called “Practice of Internal Auditing”.

This book is longer than the first and a quick look at the table of contents

tells us it has 9 study sections.

Just to highlight a few again, we’re looking at topics like

Internal Audit Operations, Financial, Environmental, and Consulting Engagements,

Sampling and Statistical Quality Control, etc.

The final book looks like it’s definitely the longest and most robust of the three.

Part 3 is called “Business Knowledge for Internal Auditing”,

and this book is quite a bit thicker than the other two.

Inside, it has 14 study units ranging from

Strategic Management and Planning to IT Infrastructure

to Managerial Accounting: Costing Systems and Decision Makings,

and a whole lot more

Let’s explore the online course!

The platform of the Gleim CIA course features SmartAdapt technology,

which is the framework for your entire review.

You’ll login and enter your Personal Classroom.

Here, you’ll choose which course you’d like to study from.

We’re going to start with CIA Part 1.

You’ll need to agree to the Gleim policies before getting started.

Then, the first thing you’ll see is a language survey,

followed by prompts to set up your personalized study planner.

You can begin your studies without setting up the study planner;

however, I highly encourage you to do this as a first step

because it will help keep you on track.

In the study planner, you’ll enter your study start date and exam date.

If you don’t know your exam date, provide a guestimate instead.

Also, the study planner allows you to select how many hours per day you can study.

If there are days on which you can’t study at all, leave those at 0 hours.

While I didn’t do so here,

you can also select dates on which you won’t be available to study,

even if it falls on your regular study day.

For instance, if you have a work convention to attend

and know that date in advance,

you can provide it as a blackout date.

The Gleim course won’t factor that date into your studies and will spread out the study hours required

on the dates on which you are available.

Finally, the study planner allows you to elect to receive emails if you are off track.

Your Personal Counselor, who is your mentor and helps keep you on track,

can even call you if you fall behind.

And Gleim can also send you text messages regarding important due dates.

On the last prompt, you can select if you want to study in sequential order.

I recommend that you study in the order Gleim has set up,

as the information in the course builds upon foundational material

that you'll learn using sequential order.

Now that my study plan is ready, I’m going to start the course!

The main screen features all of the available study units.

For CIA Part 1, you can see there are 7.

But first, let’s take a quick look at the additional resources provided.

You can access these anytime.

This is where you can modify your study planner, download audio lectures,

find course updates, view supplemental videos,

and discover how to study in the CIA Exam Guide.

Plus, there are also appendices which you may find helpful.

Back to the Study Unit List,

here’s where I can see, at a glance, all the study units, score overviews, and find tools that will

be helpful later in my studies, like Exam Rehearsals and a Final Review.

You’ll see that the Final Review and Exam Rehearsal are locked.

You’ll need to work through the materials and take the first Exam Rehearsal before these will open.

Since I’m just starting Study Unit 1, I don’t have any scores, so let’s change that and get started!

First, you’ll be presented with a Diagnostic Quiz.

In this quiz, the SmartAdapt course gets the data it needs to determine your levels of understanding

about the content you’re about to study.

Don’t worry if you score poorly on this quiz --

it’s absolutely fine to have low scores here because, in reality,

it’s unlikely that you’ve seen any of this material presented in this way before.

You can skip this quiz.

However, that means that a baseline won’t be established.

And because of that, the course won’t be able to pinpoint your weak areas

and save you study time.

I recommend taking this quiz so the course can focus your studies.

I’m not answering the questions correctly or even reading them because I want to show you the entire course,

and I know you don't have all day to watch this video!

Once I get to the end, I have the opportunity to review my answers before submitting the quiz,

and once I click “End Review,” my responses will be graded.

Ouch! 10%.

Actually, that’s not bad considering I didn’t read the questions!

Analytics are provided, and then I get the opportunity to check out the correct and incorrect answer explanations.

Read these for each question, as this is an excellent learning opportunity.

Awesome.

Ok

Now I’m in the main area for Study Unit 1.

At this point, the course is recommending that I read the book.

However, if you are a visual learner, you may want to watch the lectures instead.

I don’t recommend that you read the book AND watch the lectures

as that is a duplicate effort.

Instead, pick one.

If you choose to read the book, take active notes while reading.

And if you watch the lectures and have a physical copy of the book,

take notes in the margins of it while the lecture plays.

Finally, you can also listen to audios here,

but remember you can download the audios in the additional resources menu,

which is available next to the the Study Unit List tab.

Since you can download these, I would only listen to them while commuting or

when you wouldn’t otherwise have more time and internet access to study.

I’m going to show you all the learning tools:

reading, lectures, and audios.

First up, the book.

Here is the digital book, and you can select a subunit,

which is a small lesson from the main Study Unit.

Once you actively read the book and take notes,

you’ll be moved on to answer focus questions,

which are true/false questions that are meant to demonstrate your knowledge of what you just read.

I know what you are thinking:

hold on, there are no true/false questions on the CIA exam!

And you are right.

However, these are not practice questions;

they serve to gauge if you learned the needed concepts while reading.

If you get most of the focus questions incorrect,

go back and re-read the book or watch the video lectures instead.

Again, I’m not going to read the focus questions, so I’ll just select true for each one.

I hope I get one right!

You’ll see that answer explanations are being served as I answer questions.

Read these as you go along

it’s another learning opportunity.

Whew, I did get one right!

The course will advance you to the next digital book area;

however, I’m going to jump into the lectures so you can get an idea for how they work.

Like everything else, you can select a subunit to keep your studies in small chunks.

Let’s watch a sample.

You can fast forward, go back, and pause to keep the lectures at your learning pace.

In most video lectures, the instructor walks through difficult MCQs to demonstrate how to approach the questions

and provide further guidance about the topic he or she has just covered.

All answer choices will be discussed, which is essential to understanding the material.

It also helps you discover how the IIA may attempt to trick or distract you

with some of the answer choices.

I’m going to jump around here, but you can see that the instructor marks through the incorrect choices,

mentions why it’s incorrect, and moves on to the next choice.

Very quickly, I’m going to show you the audio lectures.

You can see that these are also broken up into bite-sized subunits.

Now that I’ve discovered all of the learning tools, I’m going to check out the course's testing portion.

Here, I can either elect to take another adaptive quiz

or jump into the test bank.

However, again, if I don’t take the adaptive quiz, I’ll end up studying information I already know.

And I also won’t have an informed final review, as this is populated based on weak areas.

This adaptive quiz is just like the first in that it emulates the Pearson Vue exam environment.

Just like at Pearson Vue, I won’t be able to see the correct or incorrect answers.

However, I will be able to see them when I’m finished with the quiz.

I mentioned the CIA test bank. Let’s take a brief look at that.

There are several options in the test bank. You can create a practice exam

in which correct answers aren’t shown,

or you can take a practice session, where you’ll be able to see the answers in real-time.

You can get pretty granular with the concepts on which you want to work.

The test bank allows you to drill down at the subunit level and create as many quizzes as you want.

You’ll see that once I enter the study session,

the format is not like Pearson Vue at all,

as this tool is intended for practice only.

Please note! The test bank content isn’t unique!

And you may end up memorizing questions if you work them both in the course AND in the test bank,

So, I recommend not utilizing the test bank. The course will include all the questions you need!

Additionally, if you work through the test bank, you’ll have to do all the leg work.

In contrast, adaptive quizzes are tailored to your performance

making sure you get quizzed on topics you need to strengthen.

Also, you’ll receive questions you have already mastered

to keep previous topics you’ve already learned about fresh.

Almost done!

You can access the performance tab to see how you’re scoring in the course.

As you can see, not reading the questions didn’t really pay off for me in the end.

But I hope your scores are much better than mine!

Last, there is the Extras tab,

which features some pretty neat study aids.

My favorite is the core concepts,

which is a PDF summarizing all of the most important material in the study unit.

It’s an excellent review or gut-check to determine if you’ve learned everything covered.

If you don’t feel like you understand everything contained within the core concepts,

this could be a sign that you need to come back to this study unit again.

Once you’ve completed Study Units 1-7,

you'll take Exam rehearsal 1,

move into a final review,

and take the second Exam Rehearsal.

Only complete the exam rehearsal when you have the full 150 minutes

to complete all the questions in 1 sitting.

The Exam Rehearsal gauges how well you understand all the material covered in the course.

And you’ll notice that it looks just like all those adaptive quizzes you completed throughout.

And that’s it for the unboxing.

Quick recap: we’ve got the canvas bag,

Free Accounting Career Guide flyer,

and three high-quality CIA Exam Prep Guides.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of the elite courses Gleim offers

instead of just purchasing the books,

I Pass the CIA Exam is currently offering discounts you can take advantage of.

I’ll link the discounts in the video description below,

or you can visit IPasstheCIAExam.com for more details.

Please note: we’ll offer it for as long as we can, but this is a limited time offer.

We hope you enjoyed this Gleim CIA Prep unboxing video from IPasstheCIAExam.com.

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Thanks again, and good luck with your CIA Exam preparation study efforts!