Fun Is Serious Business: Digital Natives and Digital Technologies in Construction Education

Abstract

Digital technologies are becoming increasingly wide-spread not just in our personal but also in our professional lives. Younger generations, born into a world of vast technological advances and innovations, are constantly connected expecting immediate response. Despite the relatively later adoption of digital technology in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, it has now become a permanent part of its successful operation with one such example being Building Information Modelling (BIM). This study employed a survey research approach to investigate how digital natives cope with the use of digital construction technologies in an education context. The findings suggest that the students on the course prefer mobile devices over desktop computers, stay connected continuously by using a wide variety of social media applications, learn new construction-specific freeware intuitively and by experimenting rather than following step-by-step instructions, and especially value the use of diverse specialist software to aid their learning. These findings could have potential implications for the future design of learning spaces, the way connectivity is considered in delivery and assessment, and the continual upskilling of the older generation faculty to address the constantly evolving learning preferences of the digital natives.