Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program (BOCEP)

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

To keep pace with changes in communities and policies, urban planners need to learn throughout their careers. But finding the right time, place, and price for professional development can be difficult. The Bloustein School offers several online continuing education courses designed to meet the needs of busy professionals. The courses offer convenience as well as many opportunities to share ideas and discuss issues with other planners. Each course is taught at a graduate level by an expert practitioner or researcher. Courses are open for five weeks, and students can participate at their convenience. You do not need any special technological skills—if you can use e-mail and navigate the Internet, you're ready to take a Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program (BOCEP) course.


ABOUT BOCEP COURSES

Planners today deal with issues and challenges that Olmsted and Burnham could not have imagined. BOCEP courses are designed to help planning professionals become better able to deal with new and difficult challenges in their field.

Every BOCEP course is offered in a “learning anywhere, anytime” mode. There are no required meetings, though instructors can offer optional live meetings. Students can participate in their class at anytime from virtually any computer with an Internet connection.

COURSE TRACKS
Tracks are a set of related courses in a knowledge area. Every course offered in BOCEP can be applied to at least one track. Students seeking Certificates of Completion must complete at least three courses in a track.

Economic Development and Real Estate: Courses in this track focus on issues relate to economic development, real estate development and management, and specialty topics related to improving the overall wealth of a community.

Planning Law and Legal Issues: This track focuses on legal issues in planning, and how planners can use legal issues to achieve planning goals. This concentration also offers special topics in land use law – such as redevelopment law.

Smart Growth and Sustainable Development: Courses in this track focus on subjects related to enhancing equity and improving the quality of life of residents in a district, community, or city.

Urban Design and Placemaking: This track is focused on physical planning issues that improve the quality of life in urban, suburban and rural communities. Classes in this track focus on urban design, architecture, transportation planning and site development issues.

Courses that are not part of a particular track can be applied to any other track for consideration in a Certificate of Completion.

COURSE FORMAT
All courses are 5 ½ weeks long. Each course will have a five-day orientation period, four weeks of instruction, and one week for an examination. The orientation period of the course will last from Wednesday through Sunday. Instruction begins on a Monday, and the instructional part of the class will end four weeks later on a Sunday. Students will have a week to complete an examination designed to help them demonstrate their mastery of the material. Typically, the instructional portion of each class will consist of four key topics, each of which the instructor will explore for a week.

Typical BOCEP Course format

Students learn by reading materials and engaging in dialogues with instructors and their peers. (A typical student learns and retains more this way than in a traditional presentation or panel discussion.) In BOCEP classes, the more you put into a class, the more you get out of it. That means that you will get a lot more knowledge by sharing your information and perspectives with your classmates. In studio courses, everyone is expected to bring an issue or concern to the class to be explored by the rest of the class.

Instructors assume that all students have a basic understanding of planning principles and techniques. This is why we recommend that you should be a professional planner, planning instructor, planning official, or otherwise involved in urban planning issues to take a BOCEP course.

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