ECI Certificates
Accelerate your career with ECI Certificates
Early Childhood Investigations (ECI) gives early care and education professionals free, conference-quality™ professional development—and certificates to document the hours you earn. This is your complete guide to registering, earning certificates, and tracking your hours. For teachers, administrators, directors, program owners, and education leaders serving children from birth through age six.
Check my registry
How to register and join
What you’ll need: A computer or mobile device, a reliable internet connection, and an email address. We host every webinar on Zoom—download the free Zoom app for full functionality, or join from a supported web browser.
How it works:
Browse our upcoming webinars and register for any session. Registration is always free.
When you register, you provide your email address. The system uses it to send confirmation and reminder emails with your personal link to join the live session.
On the webinar day, click the link in your confirmation or reminder email to join on screen.
Important: To be eligible for a personalized certificate, you must join the live webinar on screen using your unique link and stay from the very beginning to the very end. Our system records when you log in and log off. We only send certificates to people who logged in by clicking that link—the system will not record your presence or send a certificate if you only call in and listen by phone.
How to earn a certificate
Live webinar viewers — personalized certificate
If you attend the live webinar and stay from the beginning to the very end, you will receive your official personalized certificate by email within 7 days of the live webinar, and it will be saved to your ECI Certificate Portal account.
Personalized certificates are emailed within 7 days after the live session. Please do not contact us about personalized certificates until 7 full days have passed.
If it has been more than 7 days, check your spam/junk folder. The subject line reads: “Your certificate of attendance - [Title of webinar].”
We also announce and display a shortened backup link on the final two slides of every session, in case you don’t receive the email.
Store your certificates after you download them. We recommend downloading and saving each certificate even though it lives in your portal, so you always have a copy on hand.
Store your certificates after you download them. If you download blank certificates, there will be no way to track which sessions you have taken or replace lost certificates.
You can also download the blank certificate using the link displayed at the end of the webinar.
For recording viewers
Late arrivals, group & recording viewers — blank certificate
If you arrive late to the live webinar, leave early, are attending in a group with only one person logged into Zoom, or watch the recording, download the blank certificate by following the link announced and displayed at the end of every webinar and recording.
Recording viewers must enter the link announced and displayed on the very last slide into a browser to download a blank customizable certificate.
Personalized certificates are not available to recording viewers or to those who arrive late or leave before the session ends.
We cannot send the link to people who view recordings, and we cannot provide technical support for, or respond to email about, recording certificates.
Blank certificates are your responsibility—we will not email the blank certificate or its link.
Blank certificates are your responsibility
Blank certificates are your responsibility—we will not email the blank certificate or its link.
Watching live? Click the link shared in chat by the ECI team to download the blank certificate, and write down the link shown on screen at the end of the webinar.
Watching the recording? Write down the link to your certificate shown at the end of the recording.
Your ECI Certificate Portal
All of your earned ECI certificates live in one place: the ECI Certificate Portal, a free account linked directly to your ECI activity and accessible anytime.
How to create your free account:
Click Sign Up and enter your name, your email address (use the same email you register with for ECI webinars), and a password.
Check your inbox for a verification email and click the confirmation link.
Log in. Certificates from webinars you attend appear automatically within 7 days of each live session.
Inside the portal you can see every session you’ve registered for and download the certificates you’ve earned. We still recommend saving each certificate to your own computer or cloud storage as a backup.
Checking your certificates and hours
You have several ways to confirm what you’ve earned:
Check your portal. Log in to the ECI Certificate Portal anytime to view the sessions you’ve registered for and download your certificates. Each certificate shows the webinar title, date, and hours.
Check your email. Personalized certificates are emailed to eligible live attendees within 7 days, with the subject line “Your Certificate of Completion - [Title of webinar].” Check spam/junk before contacting us.
Check your registry. Use the Check my registry tool on this page to see what we know about how your state registry or licensing agency handles ECI certificates.
Need your attendance verified? Our system retains attendance records, including the time you logged in and logged off. If your supervisor, a licensing agency, or a registry asks us to confirm your attendance, we check our records and verify it.
Certificate integrity
We have faith in the early childhood educators who attend our webinars—our relationships are based on trust. Our system tracks registrants’ participation, and we can and do check the participation of specific registrants at the request of registries, licensing agencies, and supervisors. If you provide a certificate for a webinar you did not participate in, we can easily identify the fraudulent claim.
Cheating by fraudulently using our certificates hurts the families who trust you, damages your reputation and your employer’s, and erodes ECI’s credibility with the agencies and registries that accept our certificates—ultimately threatening free access for the hundreds of thousands of educators who rely on us.
Where our certificates are accepted
The vast majority of states and all Canadian registries accept ECI certificates, but every state and registry has its own rules. It is your responsibility to know the rules that apply to your professional development hours. We’ve been offering webinars since 2010 and very few attendees report problems, but you should always check with your own licensing agency or registry.
The list below is incomplete. If your registry or licensing agency isn’t listed, it does not mean our certificates aren’t accepted—it means we don’t have current information about their rules.
Canada
All Canadian Registries accept our certificates. Please refer to your agency for specific instructions about how to use our certificates in your registry.
United States
Alabama
No Information
Alaska
No Information
Arizona
Arizona Early Childhood Workforce Registry: Accepts certificates from live and recorded webinars.
Accepts certificates from live and recorded webinars with special directions
Colorado
No Information
Connecticut
No Information
Delaware
No Information
Accepts our certificates under specific conditions
Florida
No Information
Georgia
No Information
Hawaii
PATCH DHS Early Childhood Registry: Accepts certificates from live and recorded webinars
Idaho
No Information
Illinois
No Information
Indiana
No Information
Iowa
No Information
Kansas
No Information
Kentucky
No Information
Louisiana
No Information
Maine Roads to Quality Professional Development Network (MRTQ PDN) : Accepts our certificates under specific conditions
Accepts only the OFFICIAL personalized certificate from the live session.
Massachusetts
No Information
MiRegistry Approved Training Sponsor Organization (TSO): Events posted in MiRegistry events calendar are eligible for training credit
Minnesota Develop: Accepts our certificates under specific conditions
Mississippi
No Information
Missouri
No Information
Montana
No Information
Nebraska
No Information
Nevada
No Information
New Hampshire
No Information
New Jersey
No Information
New Mexico
No Information
New York
No Information
North Carolina
No Information
North Dakota
Our certificates are not accepted by North Dakota's Professional Development (PD) Registry. North Dakota's requires professional development to be delivered through PQAS-approved organizations or instructors. Check with your employer, as some programs may accept our certificates for internal training purposes.
Ohio
OCCRRA Training Organization (OIN is: 21098256): Events posted in OCCRRA events calendar are eligible for training credit.
Oklahoma
No Information
Professional Development Registry: Accepts our certificates under specific conditions
Pennsylvania
Our certificates are not accepted by Pennsylvania's Professional Development (PD) Registry. Pennsylvania requires professional development to be delivered through PQAS-approved organizations or instructors. Check with your employer, as some programs may accept our certificates for internal training purposes.
Rhode Island
No Information
South Carolina
No Information
South Dakota
No Information
Tennessee
No Information
Texas
No Information
Utah
No Information
Vermont
No Information
Virginia
No Information
Washington
No Information
Yes from the live webinars. Yes from the recorded webinars. The training must be at least one hour in length and must tie back to at least one of WV Early Childhood Core Knowledge and Competency document.
WiRegistry Approved Training Sponsor Organization (TSO): Events posted in WiRegistry events calendar are eligible for training credit
For your state’s broader requirements, see our Professional Development Requirements by State hub.
Learning materials and resources
Professional Development Reflections Form. Reflect on each session and document your learning; some registries ask for it. Download reflection form.
Recordings & podcasts. Revisit sessions on demand through our recordings and podcast episodes.
Professional Development by State. Look up your state’s requirements at our PD Requirements hub.
Blog. Browse the ECI blog for articles and guides.
Newsletter. Join 350,000+ early childhood professionals on our weekly newsletter for new webinars and announcements.
Technology and media support
Platform: All webinars are delivered live on Zoom. Download the free Zoom app for full functionality, or join from a supported web browser.
What you’ll need: A reliable internet connection and audio through your computer, headset, or device. A webcam is optional.
Joining or link issues: If your join link or certificate link doesn’t work, confirm you’re using the same email you registered with, enter the full link exactly as shown, and check your spam/junk folder. If it still doesn’t work, see the FAQs or contact us.
Get help or share a concern
If you have a question, need help, or want to raise a concern or complaint, contact us through our contact page and submit a support inquiry. Include your name, the email you registered with, the webinar title and date, and a description of your question or concern.
We review every inquiry and respond as quickly as we can.
Please note: personalized certificates are emailed within 7 days of a live session—please wait the full 7 days and check your spam folder before reaching out about a missing certificate. We are not able to provide technical support for blank certificates or certificate links for recordings.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get access to the Certificate Portal?
When will I receive my certificate?
How can I check the professional development hours I've earned?
What do I have to do to earn a certificate?
I joined late, left early, or watched the recording. What now?
The webinar ended before I got my certificate. What now?
I didn't get a certificate. What do I do?
Why doesn't the link to my certificate work?
Does my state accept ECI certificates?
Where can I find the Professional Development Reflections Form?
Can we watch as a group for our staff meeting? How does each person get a certificate?
Do you offer CEUs?
