What you need to know about Certificates of Attendance and CEUs from Early Childhood Investigations

We’re pleased to provide a link to download a free Certificate of Attendance for every session we offer. If you attend the session from the beginning to the very end, you will also be awarded a personalized certificate of attendance by email.

You can also apply separately to purchase Continuing Education Units from University of Oklahoma.

Certificates of Attendance and CEUs are different. You may need to produce a certificate to prove that you attended professional development for required professional development. CEUs are partial course credits that can be applied to the process of earning a credential or degree.

 

You will use an online link to download your certificate during each webinar. You can download the certificate instantly when you attend a live session and you can download it if you watch the recording. See the details below.

You need Adobe Reader to open and print your certificates. Most computers have the software, but if not you can download it here. It’s free.Acrobat Reader Download

We recommend that all participants complete a Professional Development Reflections Form to extend their online learning experiences. Further, we also suggest that supervisors require that staff members who attend webinars complete the Reflections Form or their own form as additional proof of attendance and to encourage deeper thinking about the webinar’s main themes.  Our Reflections Form is required for the application process for CEUs from University of Oklahoma.

How you get

If you attend the live webinar on the day it airs, you have three options:

—-1.—-

Personalized certificates are not available to recording viewers or those who arrive late or end the webinar before it is over.

—-2. & 3.—-

The handouts pane is not visible in recordings.

 

* NOTE: We rely on an automated system provided by our webinar provider, GoToWebinar to send out the personalized to certificates. When you register for a webinar, you provide your email address. The system uses that email address to send confirmation and reminder emails about the webinar and instructions with a link to log in. We only send emails with the link to the certificate to people who have logged in by clicking on the link sent in the confirmation and reminder  to watch the webinar. The system will not record your presence and send a certificate if you only call in and listen by phone.  Our system retains attendance records and records the time you log in  to the on-screen webinar and when you log off. It uses that information to send out the email with the link. If your supervisor or a licensing agency inquires about your attendance, we will check our records to verify your attendance.

We also announce and display on the screen a “shortened” link on the final two slides at THE END of every session. This link is provided as a back-up in case you do not receive the email with your personalized certificate.

  • To obtain the blank certificate with the shortened link, write down the link displayed on the screen. (It is often hard to capture the link if you are only listening, but not viewing the screen.) After the session enter the into your browser to download the certificate. 
  • If you do not receive the email with your personalized certificate within 2 weeks, please check your “junk” or “spam” folder in your email system or use the shortened link you wrote down at the end of the webinar to access the blank certificate.
  • If you receive an email with the subject line “We’re sorry you could not attend the webinar”, the system did not record your presence, and you will not receive a personalized certificate. The email will include a link to the recording, and you can find all of the recordings here.
  • Please note that we cannot send the link to people who view the recordings, and we cannot respond to email about problems with certificates.

You are responsible for your certificate. We do not offer technical support for, or respond to email about certificates.

How you get

How you obtain your certificate if you watch the recording

Recordings

If you watch recordings, there’s only one way to get your certificate.

Write down the link displayed at the end of the webinar/recording.

This link is different in EVERY webinar. It always begins with bit.ly/ece   .

Some organizations block shortened links that begin with bit.ly/. If you can’t download the link from your place of work, you will need to use another computer or device at another location.

There are two ways to access the recordings.

—-1.—-

If you registered for the webinar, you will receive a follow up email within 24 hours. Check your junk or Spam folder if you think you have not received it.

At the bottom of the email, highlighted in gray, you will see the link to the recording.  It looks like this at the bottom of the email.

(Believe us, if we could make it more obvious, we would. The recording link is coded by our webinar provider.)

—-2.—-

On our website, navigate to the Recordings, Slides and Handouts page.

The recordings are posted in reverse order, with the most recent recording first. Scroll down to find the recording you are looking for. This page is the treasure trove of our site!

They should appear within hours after the webinar concludes. If you don’t see the latest webinar in the list, “hard refresh” your browser by holding down Ctrl and pressing F5 in Windows,  or in Mac, hold down the “Command” key and press the “R”.

If you watch the recording of the session you can download the certificate.

  • You must watch the entire recording.
  • We also announce and display on the screen a “shortened” link on the final two slides at THE END of every session.
  • To obtain the certificate with the shortened link, write down the link displayed on the screen.
  • After the session enter the into your browser to download the certificate.
  • Please note that some schools and organizations block shortened links. This means the page will not open if your organization blocks shortened links. If your link does not work, please try to access it in another location.
  • Please note that we cannot send the link to people who view the recordings, and we cannot respond to email about problems with certificates.

You are responsible for your certificate. We do not offer technical support for, or respond to email about certificates.

 

Problems with Certificates

If you have trouble downloading our certificates, these details may help:

  • you do not write down or enter the links accurately,

 The links always start with “bit.ly/ece” and are followed by a code. Do not type in www. or http:// prior  to bit.ly/

  • you enter the links into a search engine instead of into the address (URL) field on your browser,

  • you are downloading the links from your workplace and the system is set to block “shortened links” (the links that start with bit.ly/.)

The reason we offer shortened links is that our links are very, very long. It’s not something we can change, it’s due to the way websites work. But, if this is the case, I suggest you try downloading them from home or a computer that is not in an organization that blocks shortened links.

You are responsible for your certificate. We do not offer technical support for, or respond to email about certificates.

 

Acceptance of Certificates

Please be aware that the certificates may or may not fulfill licensing or credentialing requirements for ongoing professional development. This is determied on a state by state or agency by agency basis.  At this time, ECI Webinars are not officially sanctioned or endorsed by any organization or licensing body, however many licensing and QRIS systems accept the webinar certificates as proof of ongoing professional development. You must check with your agency to determine if it accepts the certificates.

Why we have to be so strict about certificates

Early Childhood Investigations is a free service. Other than offsetting some of the costs of delivering the webinars with sponsorships, I do not receive any compensation. ECI operates with only me (Fran Simon) and one part time staff member. Thousands of people attend the webinars, but there’s only two people running the show. As much as we wish we could, we cannot respond to every request for certificates. The requests are overwhelming, so please ask a friend or someone to help you if you are having trouble with your certificates.

We have designed this somewhat complicated process in order to protect the integrity and prevent fraudulent use of the certificates. We hope to pursue official approval for the webinars in as many states as possible, so keeping the process as fraud-proof as possible while keeping it easy enough for two people to manage is important to our credibility. While it may seem  challenging to navigate the process, it is designed with integrity, safety, ease of administration in mind. Thousands of attendees have successfully used the certificates. We are certain you can obtain and use your certificates with a little patience and practice.