How Amber Book Does It

Amber Book has lots of small bite size videos, paired with lots of practice questions. There are a few longer videos spread throughout, but many of them are around two minutes long. This quick approach focuses on your recall and your ability to quickly remember the information set out in the videos, which arguably mimics what you'll have to do when you see a question on the ARE. 

Amber Book thinks that architects are visual learners, so all their videos are animated, showing diagrams or a written question for all the content they present. They'll also occasionally encourage you to pause the video to answer a practice question on your own, then hit play again to see the answer and proceed with the video.  

Because Amber Book's study approach effectively has you studying for all the divisions at the same time, a lot of their videos are structured by topic, rather than the specific division that topic is likely to appear on. This works for some content, as some things do appear on multiple divisions—but if you're trying to focus solely on a problem area or really nail one division, this approach can get tricky to follow. 

How We Do It

We're in the middle of updating our videos to take a more visual approach, so they'll be a mix of animated visuals and a real architect lecturer who can intersperse their own lived experience into the material. (Check out our CE and PcM videos to see where we're headed.) This approach gives you the best of both worlds—the visual component that's probably familiar to you and can help with comprehension, combined with a familiar human face who's been in your shoes before. 

Interspersed throughout the course you'll find scenario videos, which follow a real firm through some of the hypothetical scenarios and concepts you'll have just reviewed. This presents the same information in another way, and shows you how some of these high-level concepts can look in real practice once you're licensed. 

Each video is also closely aligned to an objective from that division, so you can clearly follow where you are in the process and make sure that you have a deep understanding of each objective before moving on to quizzes or practice exams to test your knowledge. 

A team of registered architects and education specialists works on all our videos to make sure that the content is aligned with NCARB and is relevant to what you're going to encounter on the ARE. To do this, we spend hours combing through all the resources listed at the end of the ARE 5.0 Guidelines from NCARB and distill all that information down for you. Our videos are research-based and peer-reviewed—all with the goal of helping you pass the ARE and become a better architect once you're done. 

Bottom Line?

Both Amber Book and Black Spectacles have content-rich videos designed to help you pass the ARE. What it'll come down to is how you learn best. If you're solidly a visual learner, Amber Book might work for you. But research suggests that most people learn best by absorbing information in multiple different ways, which is why we incorporate visuals, a lecturer, and scenarios into our video courses. 

How Amber Book Does It

Amber Book has a pretty active Facebook community where you can connect with your peers to form your own study groups if you like, but their only facilitated study group is called 40 Minutes of Competence, hosted weekly on Zoom. It's free to join whether you're an Amber Book subscriber or not, and you can join at any point in your licensure journey. 

During these sessions, the host dives into one sample question so everyone attending can work through it together. The topic is typically posted in the NCARB community before the Thursday evening session, so you can see if the question is relevant to what you're studying. 

After the live session is over, there's a lightly edited version that gets added to a flashcard within your Amber Book account where you can watch the recording later. If you're not an Amber Book customer, there's no way for you to refer back to the recording afterwards. 

How We Do It

Black Spectacles has two options for live instruction: ARE Live, our free monthly webinar series, and Virtual Workshops, which are hosted on Zoom every Sunday. 

ARE Live is co-hosted by a different guest expert each month, bringing in a diverse array of backgrounds and expertise. Each episode is dedicated to a specific division or content area, and the hosts walk through a series of questions or a scenario that dives into it. There's also a live Q&A at the end of each of these episodes, so you can ask our in-house architect Chris Hopstock and the guest expert any questions you have about the content they just covered. We also create a page in our ARE community for each episode, so you can collaborate with your peers and the hosts during and after the episode. Those community pages stay up, so you can always refer back to the discussions and the answers. ARE Live is free and available to the public, whether you're a Black Spectacles subscriber or not, and you can watch all the recordings back for free at any time. 

In addition to ARE Live, we also hostly weekly Virtual Workshops for each division. That means that every Sunday, there are six workshops, all taught by licensed instructors, happening simultaneously so you can attend the division you're actively studying for. You'll be put into breakout rooms during the workshop so you can work through the provided practice questions with your peers, and your instructor will be available to address any issues or offer support if you need it. You can also submit questions ahead of the workshop to help inform the Q&A at the end.

These workshops are a great chance to connect with potential study partners who are working on the same division as you, as well as get one-on-one face time with an instructor who can help you pass the ARE. Virtual Workshops are included in the Expert membership, and are also available to all candidates on a firm membership. Since you get the most value out of the live workshop, they're currently not recorded for later viewing, and all the attendees are encouraged to take their own notes. 

Bottom Line?

Both test prep providers offer chances for you to collaborate and learn in real time, and both offer free options as well. Though 40 Minutes of Competence is weekly as compared to ARE Live's monthly schedule, Black Spectacles also has the Virtual Workshops, which is a much smaller group and allows for even greater focused collaboration.

If you're looking for an affordable option, the free Amber Book session will likely work for you, though you won't be able to watch the recordings after if you're not already an Amber Book subscriber. All our ARE Live episodes are available for viewing after whether you're a subscriber or not, and you can refer back to the community pages as well and revive the discussion if you have further questions. And, if you are an Expert member, you have the chance for an even more personalized experience with our Virtual Workshops. So if live instruction and collaboration with your peers is important to your study strategy, Black Spectacles has the better options for you there.