OpenCEU Lets ACE Providers Host CEUs for Free. Matt Harrington’s Latest Innovation Advances ABA Education

Matt Harrington, a BCBA who has issued more than 10,000 CEU certificates through his Behaviorist Bookclub, launched OpenCEU in July 2026. The site lets BACB Authorized Continuing Education (ACE) providers host live and recorded CEUs with no monthly or setup fee, and it takes 0% of what providers charge for paid courses.

“There are no transaction fees. The model is based on getting as many users as possible,” Harrington told BCBA Melissa Kozak in a September 15 interview on Going Independent. OpenCEU’s terms of service say the site is free to use “because sponsors advertise on the platform.”

What Providers Get

A provider can go live from a web browser, without Zoom or streaming software, and attendees watch on an OpenCEU viewer page. When the stream ends, OpenCEU automatically publishes and transcribes the recording. The platform also handles registration pages, email reminders, and a dashboard of registrants, attendance, quiz results, and certificates.

Attendance checks are built in. Four numerical codes appear per CEU hour, and attendees must enter all of them; anyone who missed the live session can take a make-up quiz. OpenCEU issues a certificate once the learner passes a comprehension quiz, and the certificate carries the provider’s ACE number plus an appendix of timestamped attendance and quiz answers for audits.

To host, a provider needs a BACB ACE provider number, and a person reviews each application, usually within one business day. OpenCEU does not require exclusivity, so providers can keep selling on BehaviorLive and other sites. On paid courses, the only fee is Stripe’s standard processing charge, listed at about 2.9% plus 30 cents, with Stripe paying out on its standard two-business-day schedule.

The no-cost promise applies to providers. For learners, sign-up is free, and many courses cost nothing, but providers set their own prices, and paid listings on the site run from about $5 to $200.

New Attendance Rules

OpenCEU launched the same month the BACB’s updated ACE Provider Handbook took effect on July 1, 2026. The handbook makes coordinators responsible for ensuring participants “are present and participating for the entire event.” For live online events, Zoom sign-in and sign-out records alone do not count; acceptable methods include embedded responses such as periodic numerical codes or polls. Recorded events need at least three knowledge questions per CEU or another form of active responding.

Harrington ties his offer to that shift. “With the new requirements around live attendance tracking, it’s getting pretty complex to throw something on Zoom and call it a day. OpenCEU is my answer to that, and it’s 100% free,” he told Kozak.

The platform predates the rule change in rough form. “OpenCEU was my fourth attempt at some version of getting ACE Providers to host for me. It took me two years of iterations to get there,” he said.

Six Years a BCBA, Five as a Provider

Harrington says he has been a BCBA for nearly six years and an ACE provider for more than five. His OpenCEU speaker bio lists work on hospital severe behavior units, work as a clinical manager carrying his own caseload, and nearly two years as a fully telehealth behavior analyst.

His continuing education work runs through the Behaviorist Bookclub, which says aims to teach practitioners to use ABA research. The Bookclub frames its premise as a question: “What if the best continuing education in ABA wasn’t locked behind a paywall?” He hosted Applied 2023, a free one-day virtual conference held October 28, 2023, and says he ran a 2024 edition as well. The Bookclub now calls OpenCEU its “sister site.”

The Skool community he started as the ABA Clubhouse has been renamed The OpenCEU Community. It lists more than 4,000 members, weekly live CEUs, and more than 75 on-demand CEUs, with optional $5 and $25 monthly memberships that it describes as donations to keep the platform open access.

Harrington also works in marketing. He says the ABA digital marketing agency he founded peaked at about $40,000 a month before A-Train Marketing acquired it, and he now leads ABA growth strategy there.

The Vision of OpenCEU

He wants OpenCEU to become a marketplace connecting behavior analysts with continuing education from many providers. The site now lists certificates for BCBA CEUs as well as PDUs, the professional development units RBTs earn.

AT A GLANCE

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