Digital technologies in construction management education: A digital natives’ perspective

Abstract

Digital technologies are becoming increasingly widespread across many industries. The big question is how competence development is able to support the adoption and use of digital technologies in a professional context. A lot of hope has been put on a natural change through the younger generations, who are considered to be naturally digitally fluent. This study employed a survey research approach to investigate how digital natives cope with the use of digital construction technologies in a construction management education context. Surprisingly, neither the previous use of other construction-specific software nor the studentsǯ age group had any impact on the perceived difficulty of the technology. In the context of using professional software applications in construction management education, this research indicates: first, general digital fluency does not necessarily translate into fluency in the use of professional software applications, and second, the gap between the different generations of students is marginal or non-existent.