Impact of Digital Construction Technologies on Sustainability Awareness and Decision-Making in Civil Engineering Education

Abstract

Digital technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), Artificial Intelligence (AI), simulation platforms, and virtual and augmented reality are reshaping civil engineering education, yet their influence on sustainability awareness and decision-making is not well understood. This study surveyed 73 students enrolled in civil engineering courses at a public university in the southeastern United States. The instrument comprised 36 Likert-scale statements, grouped into eight constructs covering technology use in the curriculum, professional mindset, sustainability knowledge and lifecycle and environmental awareness. They also covered understanding of water resources, cognitive ability, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving. It also includes three decision scenarios in which a digital tool output conflicted with human input or practical constraints. Students reported favorable attitudes toward digital tools, along with strong conceptual sustainability awareness, but two applied-skill gaps stood out: only 32.9% felt able to interpret hydrologic models, and only 28.8% felt they could transfer simulation-based lessons to real world settings. In the scenarios, at most 12.3% of respondents accepted the digital output at face value, and 83.6% never did so across all three scenarios. Breadth of tool exposure was unrelated to perceptions or decision style, whereas the small group of students reporting exposure to hydrologic modeling rated their model interpretation ability substantially higher, suggesting that relevant depth matters more than the number of tools encountered. The findings support curricula that pair earlier and deeper BIM and hydrologic modeling instruction with lifecycle content and that train verification and interpretation skills alongside tool operation.