A Framework Schools Can Make Their Own

A model curriculum is a practical framework for building a degree program. It is not a mandate, or a fixed course catalog. It is not even a requirement that every institution teach the same sequence in the same way.

Instead, a model curriculum gives colleges and universities a starting point: a proposed structure of learning areas, course types, outcomes, and academic pathways that can be adopted, adapted, revised, or supplemented according to each institution’s mission, faculty strengths, student population, and administrative structure.

For ABOCE, the model curriculum helps institutions understand what a credible offsite construction degree includes, before they begin the full accreditation process.

How to Use a Model Curriculum

Offsite construction education is still an emerging field. Many schools already teach pieces of the field: design, engineering, construction management, manufacturing, logistics, digital modeling, building technology, sustainability, housing policy, fabrication, and project delivery. But those pieces often sit in separate departments, degree programs, or elective tracks. The model curriculum helps organize those scattered assets into a coherent pathway.

The model helps a school ask: what do we already teach? What is missing? Which courses could be shared across departments? Where do students encounter manufacturing-informed design? Where do they learn about factory-field coordination, productization, logistics, quality control, and site assembly? Where are those outcomes assessed? Ideally, this curriculum turns those questions into a working map.

Built for Different Institutional Starting Points

ABOCE’s model curriculum is especially useful because institutions will come to offsite construction education from different starting points.

• A university with architecture, engineering, and construction management programs may be able to assemble an offsite pathway from existing courses with limited additions.
• A school with two of those areas may use the model curriculum to identify the missing pieces and build partnerships or new courses around them.
• A school with one strong related program may use the model curriculum as a longer-term development guide, gradually adding coursework, applied learning, industry engagement, and faculty capacity.

The model curriculum is meant to reduce friction for all three groups.

Not One Voice, Many Voices

A strong model curriculum should not erase institutional identity. A polytechnic school may emphasize fabrication, systems, and applied technology. An architecture school may emphasize design integration, housing delivery, and building systems. An engineering school may emphasize performance, analysis, manufacturing, and technical coordination. A construction management program may emphasize procurement, sequencing, site assembly, cost, and project delivery. All of these approaches may be valid if they prepare students for the realities of offsite construction.

ABOCE’s model curriculum is only intended to function as a scaffold for all these organizations. It gives shape, while avoiding sameness. It only aims to help schools begin with a reliable structure, while leaving room for local mission, regional need, faculty expertise, and institutional voice.

What the Model Curriculum Includes

The model curriculum identifies the major learning domains of offsite construction education. These include manufacturing-informed design, design for manufacture and assembly, modular coordination, panelized construction, pods and building products, building systems integration, interface discipline, digital coordination, quality control, transportation, hoisting, installation sequencing, procurement, scheduling, cost modeling, regulatory context, product configuration, and factory-to-field delivery.

It may also include broader areas that support professional formation: ethics, public benefit, housing affordability, sustainability, labor conditions, team leadership, communication, research, and continuous improvement.

Undergraduate and Graduate Pathways

ABOCE’s model curriculum work should support both undergraduate and graduate pathways.

• An undergraduate pathway introduces students to offsite construction as part of a broader education in the built environment. It may include foundational coursework in design, structures, materials, construction methods, digital tools, manufacturing logic, and project delivery.
• A graduate pathway moves faster and deeper. It may be designed for students who already have prior education in architecture, engineering, construction management, manufacturing, or a related field. It may focus more directly on advanced integration, applied research, industry collaboration, productized delivery, and leadership.

Both pathways prepare students to understand offsite construction as a coordinated system rather than a collection of isolated techniques.

A Tool for Faculty and Administrators

The model curriculum helps both faculty and administrators.

• For faculty, it can provide learning outcomes, course categories, sample assignments, sequencing logic, and examples of how offsite competencies may be taught and assessed.
• For administrators, it can support program planning, internal approvals, faculty coordination, accreditation preparation, employer engagement, and resource planning.

New programs can be difficult to launch. ABOCE’s model curriculum aims to reduce the administrative burden by giving institutions a credible starting framework. Schools should be able to focus their energy on adapting the model to their students, region, faculty, and mission.

Free to Use, Built to Improve

ABOCE’s model curriculum is available as a field-building resource.

The purpose is self-serving: the offsite industry needs to accelerate adoption, reduce duplication, and help institutions respond to the growing need for offsite construction education. Schools should be able to use it as a reference, adapt it into their own course structures, and contribute lessons back as programs develop. In this way, we hope that over time, the model curriculum should improve through use.

Faculty feedback, employer input, student experience, accreditation reviews, and changes in the offsite construction sector should all help refine this model. As a compliment to ABOCE’s accreditation documents themselves, the model curriculum will remain a living framework, evolving to the industry’s input, growth, and complexity.

Urgency to Serve the Wider Community

The construction industry is changing faster than many academic programs. Housing affordability, labor shortages, productivity challenges, climate pressures, and public-sector demand for faster delivery are all increasing interest in offsite construction. But the field cannot mature without educational pathways that prepare students for its realities.

ABOCE’s model curriculum gives institutions a way to respond now. It is offered to help schools move from scattered interest to structured program development. It creates a scaffold for faculty to organize what they already know. It offers students a pathway into emerging areas of their young careers.