AOTA’s professional certificates & microcredentials
Elevate your practice and get the knowledge you need to be the best OT or OTA that you can be. Whether you’re looking to master a specific skill set or take a deep dive into a specific topic area, AOTA’s professional certificate program and microcredentials are for you! Both levels of our certificate program will equip you with knowledge and skills to better serve your clients and advance within the profession.
Why earn a professional certificate and/or microcredential?
- Get personal and professional recognition of knowledge and skills within a specified area of practice.
- Set yourself apart from the crowd when looking for job opportunities or career advancement.
- Use the digital badge as a tangible way to market your skills to employers, payers, and clients.
- Effortlessly share your learning achievements with peers, potential employers, educational institutions, and more on email and social media platforms.
- Be perceived as a trusted provider by clients.
- Improve outcomes for your clients.
Model of the professional certificate and microcredential process
What are Essentials courses?
A series of courses that are intended to provide OT content covering issues and approaches that may be new to practitioners.
What is a verifiable digital badge?
Once a professional certificate or microcredential is earned, you will receive a verifiable digital badge, unique to the professional certificate or microcredential. Your digital badges are concrete evidence of your accomplishments and can be easily shared online in your email signatures and your social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, so that your peers can celebrate your accomplishments along with you.
What is a professional certificate?
A professional certificate is a verifiable designation and document that attests to knowledge obtained by a practitioner regarding a specific topic or topic area.
Both OT and OTA practitioners who have completed the three related microcredentials specifically chosen for that certificate, the associated essentials courses, and a final integration course will be immediately awarded their professional certificate.
Professional certificates available
At this time, we have three professional certificates available:
What is a microcredential?
A microcredential is issued upon completion of a set of required thematically connected courses. The microcredential provides acknowledgement of the growing knowledge of the practitioner and can either be completed as a step to the professional certificate as stated above or completed for its own merits without advancement to a certificate—it is considered a stand-alone designation.
Microcredentials available
Determine which microcredentials interest you as either stand-alone designations or as part of a professional certificate. At this time, we have the following microcredentials available:
Compare your options
View the comparison table to learn about the differences between these programs: microcredential, professional certificate, and advanced certification.