Hands-on OTA Skills Labs

During the online Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) program, you will complete a series of 12 OTA skills labs over six weekends where you can practice your skills in an educational setting. Taught by certified, highly experienced instructors, these labs allow you to apply what you have learned online.

The six core areas of occupational therapy practice include:

We schedule your skills labs based on your chosen curriculum option to ensure you know when and where your labs will occur when you start the program. You’ll complete labs with a cohort of peers, meaning you’ll have like-minded individuals to lean on for support throughout your time in St. Kate’s OTA program.

Skills labs are an opportunity for students to ask questions and gain real-time feedback. Under supervised instruction, you will practice the therapeutic techniques and activities that OTAs use in real-world patient or client care. These labs focus on developing essential skills like patient assessment, intervention implementation, and progress monitoring across multiple areas of occupational therapy practice. Some key elements include learning how to handle assistive devices and equipment safely and effectively and participating in different simulated scenarios to practice patient or client assessment, communication, and intervention delivery.

You don’t have to live in the state where skills labs are offered to participate in the program; however, you will need to travel to the skills lab site location six weekends throughout the program.

Personalized Instruction

Our OTA skills labs have a student-to-instructor ratio of 12 to 1 to ensure you receive highly personalized instruction and immediate feedback in a close-knit educational setting. We designed these labs, which cover the six core practice areas of the occupational therapy profession, to prepare you for the supervised fieldwork required to complete the program.