Yes. First you need to contact an advisor using the link on the left. Tell them you want to develop a program plan that will enable you to receive a baccalaureate degree in education with a major in (fill in the blank with a vocational program title; e.g., welding, food services).
That program plan will include both work experience requirements (for vocational authorization) and academic requirements (for the teacher education degree). The MOCAC can help you in one of those areas, either by verifying old (outside 6 years) work experience or establishing the academic major (e.g., Ferris State University waives the 40 credit major).
You will still need to take all additional academic course work required to complete that university's graduation requirements. (Most bachelor degrees require at least 122 semester hours for graduation.) However, successful completion of the MOCAC testing will give you as much as a 40 credit jump-start toward your degree.
Yes, if you can verify 4,000 hours (equivalent to two years of full-time work experience) of recent and relevant work experience in business. Recent is defined as within 6 years. Relevant is defined as non-educational, for-pay employment in the field of business/office.
If your work experience is too old to meet the recent requirement, you may successfully pass the Michigan Teacher Test in Business and the MOCAC performance assessment to pull forward or verify old work experience. Contact an advisor and work with them to add the vocational authorization to your teaching certificate.
No. The testing is available to those individuals who wish to turn their work experience into academic credit or verify and established work experience. You can always enroll and take the course work or if you lack work experience, get a job and document the required number of hours in the field. In this way, MOCAC is no different than any CLEP test. E.g., if you had higher-level mathematics in high school, you can pay a fee and attempt to test out of that required freshman math class. Most colleges and universities have these options for verification of skill and knowledge.
The costs of coordinating, purchasing the tests, hiring subject matter experts to proctor the performance tests, and score reporting all contribute to increasing the cost of the test. And remember, performance testing is essential to MOCAC's reliability, and most MOCAC performance tests are administered with one proctor and three or fewer candidates. That part of the assessment is very expensive to administer as compared to seating 25 people in one room with paper and pencil tests.
About 2 weeks. Many tests are purchased from and scored by the National Occupational Competency Testing Institute (NOCTI). The proctor gets the materials to us after the testing, we organize it and ship it to NOCTI. They turn around tests very quickly (usually within three business days). Once we get the results, we log them in our database and send the results to you and the institutions you have requested.
We will only send results to institutions you identify during examination registration; otherwise only you are sent the results. After you get the results, you can request that official results be forwarded. This service is part of the test fee and is valid for one year from the test date; after that, there is a $25 fee to pull and send results.
You may retake the test (written, performance, or both) once with no questions asked; however, if you fail to pass a second time, we ask that your university advisor be notified so some remedial plan can be established (some refresher OJT or course work). After that, you can reregister and take the entire test again.
Contact your advisor, proctor, or someone at ORA inc to inform them that you cannot make the test at the soonest point you know you can't make it. Review our refund policy on the Costs page.
Committee examinations are arranged for those areas in which no standardized assessment exists (e.g., video production, law enforcement), but a certification code does. The reason no MOCAC exam exists in some areas is typically based on program volume. For example, we simply don't have enough secondary vocational Video Production classes to justify the expense of developing and maintaining an exam. Therefore, we meet the needs of those few programs by offering the committee examination.
MOCAC hires at least two subject matter experts (typically university professors or trained field practitioners) to assemble a set of oral or written questions designed to assess the candidate's knowledge in the profession. Some areas also require the performance of skills or a verified portfolio review. The committee assesses the skills, knowledge, and ability of the candidate, and submits a report to MOCAC indicating a pass or fail.
Contact MOCAC in writing within thirty days of receiving your results. We will review your concerns and ask you to sign a release, allowing us to share your test data with at least three MOCAC Advisory Board members. We will then ask NOCTI to hand-score your written test and ask the performance proctor to review your work product. (We retain for 90 days all products produced by candidates who fail to pass.) This subcommittee of the MOCAC Advisory Board reviews the data, talks to the proctor or reviews his/her report, and makes a decision, which is final. If the subcommittee agrees with the candidate, the test is offered again, free of charge.
First, MOCAC tests are not simple. Most tests take over eight hours to complete (written and performance) and require a significant amount of skill and knowledge to pass. (In some occupational areas, pass rates are less than 60%, based on national data.) Secondly, even though the university waives credit equal to the occupational major, candidates are still required to complete the balance of the bachelor degree requirements (an additional 90 credits in some cases). So, don't worry; even though MOCAC is a tremendous jump-start toward your degree, the university still has plenty of educational course work to offer you.
An academic advisor is the person most well-suited to give advice in the matter. If you know your advisor, contact them to discuss taking the MOCAC. If you don't know or have an advisor, use the navigation on the left to find one.
