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Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative, single-case study was to explore the development of Jamaica's maritime education and training (MET) curriculum within the local education context. In this research, the story of the development and sustainability of the local MET curriculum in its 40-year journey from 1980 to present (post 2020), as communicated by various maritime stakeholders and archival documents, is chronicled. Design/methodology/approach: The study utilized a qualitative orientation and was an embedded single-case study in its design. The entire local MET institution community and those legislatively and operationally allied to its sustained viability constituted the general population of this study. Non-probability sampling techniques were used to arrive at a maximum variation sample. Three sources of data were used in this study: individual interviews, focus group discussions and documents. Findings: The Jamaican (local) MET curriculum was the brainchild of local perspicacity that was empowered by international benevolence. It was developed to satisfy market demands that existed at the time of its inception. These market requirements of the maritime industry are what impacted the development of the local MET curriculum over four decades. Several other factors led to the sustained viability of the local MET curriculum. These included the ability of the local MET curriculum to meet direct market needs and maintain its fitness for purpose. Research limitations/implications: It is the view of the researcher that the findings of this study were limited by the fact that the voices of current students and employers from the four decades of the curriculum's existence are not represented in this initial study. The perspectives from these two sources would have broadened the description presented in this study. Practical implications: This research has shown that specialized higher education (HE) institutions are better served in their business when they maintain a symbiotic relationship with the industry for which they are producing graduates. Social implications: The treatment of HE as a service industry has gained traction globally. This would suggest that 'product placement' in specialized HE is important to the growth, development and longevity of that course of study within the society in which it exists. Originality/value: There is a dearth of national research on Jamaica's four-decades-old MET curriculum and the elements that lend to the sustained viability of same. This discussion of sustainability of the MET curriculum will benefit maritime educators and policymakers, who must continue to hone this curriculum so that it is fit for purpose. The study will also identify some of the elements of a sustainable, specialized HE curriculum. The elements identified herein can serve as exemplars and conceptual starting points for other contexts where the discussion of the sustainability of curriculum needs to be had. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the inherently dangerous environment in the maritime industry, it is an essential aspect for the human resources in the industry to have a high level of knowledge, skill and competence. Therefore, maritime education and training needs to be structured as a unique instructional design model that will ensure the acquisition of the required knowledge, skills, and competencies at the highest level. In this paper, we develop a new approach using an axiomatic design methodology extended with fuzzy set theory to define the suitable instructional design model for maritime education and training. Accordingly, we aimed to establish a decision support system for instructional designers at an institutional level and instructors at the individual level who focus on instructional design, development, and processes. The demonstration of the proposed approach is conducted for basic offshore safety induction and emergency training which is one of the compulsory training courses for people who already work or will work on offshore facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper figures out the peculiarities of the maritime learning system considering the actual challenges and requirements of both merchant and naval seafarer professions with risks of accidents, war or conflict zones, sea deriving mines, robbery, and piracy with their plethora of negative intricacies on seafarers life and impacting the life and wellbeing of their families, too. The article also focuses on reducing maritime strain and increasing marine profession attractivity in a complex environment with demanding positions regarding erratic pandemic situations or a global economy changing continuously. Not at last, computer-based or simulator training is considered beneficial for maritime education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The background of this article is an interest in analysing how assessment of professional skills is conducted in higher education contexts, drawing on video data from a course on maritime navigation. The empirical study focuses on a) how students working in a bridge simulator are able to display their knowledge about how to calculate the relation between rate of turn, turn rate and speed when navigating, and b) how their performance is evaluated. The results show that the dynamics of the assessment situation and the interaction between the student and the assessor are decisive in how well students manage the task. When analysing assessment of a professional skill as a concrete practice, knowledge emerges through joint work and cannot be ascribed to the student only. At one level, this may be seen as a threat to the validity of the testing situation, but from a different perspective, the display of knowledge-in-action is always responsive to what happens in the exercise of a professional skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ship collision is a form of maritime accident that possess great threats to transportation safety, economy, and human lives. Deck watchkeeping officers who oversee the safe navigation of the ships are responsible for preventing these collision accidents. Yet, most of the collisions are directly linked to the human errors onboard. One way to reduce these human errors is to train competent navigation officers for collision avoidance situations. However, training maritime students for complex collision situations is a challenging task. This study aims to examine if game‐based learning (GBL) can help students to perform better in collision avoidance situations by providing them the necessary skills to properly identify risks, goals, and cues in collision situations. With this purpose, we developed a digital game‐based decision‐making training containing eight collisions at sea scenarios. The developed tool was then presented to maritime engineering students as supplementary training. Thirty undergraduate maritime transportation engineering students participated in the study. A pretest/posttest control group design was adopted to investigate the effects of GBL. Tests are conducted with the use of a full mission bridge simulator. Observed changes in situational awareness, decision making, navigation, and collision avoidance performance of the participants were analyzed. The results showed that the intervention group had small but significant improvements in all dimensions compared to the control group. Overall, the game‐based decision‐making training helped students to reach a better understanding of the related course material. Required efforts and challenges to develop and incorporate such training into the existing maritime curriculum are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 25 years, the role of simulators has increased dramatically within Dutch Maritime Education and Training (MET) in parallel with new educational insights like competency-based learning. Research demonstrated that the learning efficiency for certain competences is higher in the simulator instead of that made during sea time. Relevant trends and developments that will affect MET in the future relate to maritime innovations, safety, simulator developments, human factors and didactic insights. Both sea time and simulator training contribute to the development of competencies, each having specific benefits and drawbacks. Within a balanced training program the optimal combination of on board experience, and simulator practice with online and offline learning, leads to an effective development of competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates navigation instructors' explanations of dynamic assessment practices during simulator-based competency tests, adopting a video-stimulated recall method. Episodes of authentic video materials from simulator-based competency tests are selected and subjected to interaction analysis. In the next step, the episodes are used for conducting stimulated recall interviews with navigation instructors (n = 11) in two focus groups. The results reveal the dynamic nature of assessing competence as well as how instructors participating in focus groups identified and critically discussed a variety of pedagogical dilemmas related to these dynamics. These are related to aspects that relate to what constitutes a valid exam question, how to assess students' responses, and consistency and fairness of competence tests. In particular, the results indicate the complexity of conducting valid and reliable assessments of knowledge-in-action in situ as well as how thoughtful scenario designs could reduce inconsistencies and unequal treatment of students. The results also highlight how a repeated and collaborative viewing of videos was helpful for instructors to identify potential problems in the dynamic assessment situations they viewed. The implications of the results highlight the need for conducting high-stake assessments for maritime certificates based only on observable behavior and video records of competence tests rather than during ongoing simulator tests. Lastly, the need for continuous and structured pedagogical development of instructors is identified in order to support their complex work of training and assessing competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to provide a figure analysis of female students in maritime education and training (MET) institutions over a decade (2009–2018) with the aim to analyse the possible impact of the gender equality policies applied. In recent years, while there has been an increase of female students in many technical degrees, in maritime education, the gender imbalance seems to persist. This study of female student enrolment and graduation figures of some MET institutions provides a picture of current trends in the maritime education sector. The results are not very encouraging as they reveal an unchanging tendency concerning gender equality in this field of studies. In addition, the analysis of gender policies unveils that there is still a lot of work to be done. Such policies are scarce or inexistent and do not have a significant effect towards reducing this gender gap. In order to identify possible parallelisms in the professional sector, we also analysed the percentages of women in deck and engine positions issued by the Spanish Maritime Administration during the period studied. The case of Spain shows that this gender inequality is even more profound in the maritime professional sector. The study concludes that in spite of an increasing awareness, the gender gap continues both in the educational and professional sector. Hence, the joint involvement of national maritime administrations and international maritime organizations and agencies is needed to develop more effective gender equality policies and programmes for a more egalitarian and inclusive maritime training and professional sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the promises of simulations to contribute to learning in safe-critical domains, research suggests that simulators are poorly implemented in maritime education and training systems. From the current state of research, it is far from evident how instruction in simulator-based should be designed and how skills trained in bridge simulators should be assessed and connected to professional practice. On this background, this article aims to investigate the role of instructions and assessments for developing students’ professional competencies in simulation-based learning environments. The research draws on ethnographic fieldwork and detailed analyses of video-recorded data to examine how maritime instructors make use of simulator technologies in a navigation course. Our results reveal an instructional practice in which the need to account for general principles of good seamanship and anti-collision regulations is at the core of basic navigation training. The meanings of good seamanship and the rules of the sea are hard to teach in abstraction because their application relies on an infinite number of contingencies that have to be accounted for in every specific case. Based on this premise, we stress the importance of instructional support throughout training (from briefing thorough scenario to debriefing) in order for the instructor to bridge theory and practice in ways that develop students’ competencies. Our results highlight, in detail, how simulator technologies enable displaying and assessing such competencies by supporting instructors to continuously monitor, assess, and provide feedback to the students during training sessions. Moreover, our results show how simulator-based training is related to the work conditions on board a seagoing vessel through the instructor’s systematic accomplishments. Finally, our results highlight the close relationship between technical and non-technical skills in navigation, and how these are intertwined in training for everyday maritime operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For educational and/or training purposes, games are often described as multimodal texts, where signs, gestures, images, habits, behaviors, sounds, etc. have different meanings according to the way and the context they are represented. During their execution, a large variety of strategies can be employed; images, words, sounds, music, movement, and even bodily sensations can provide the necessary factors. More importantly, when games are integrated in an educational (or training) activity, it is essential to record solid evidence that the targeted learning outcome is achieved. Game-based learning (GBL) for seafarers is a multifactor domain combining educational psychology, learning theories, instructional design, computer game technology, and last but not least, research in the maritime field. In order to create the appropriate framework, there is a need to combine three different scientific areas (education design, computer science, and maritime education and training (MET)) towards the proper game design. In these types of games, the design process includes an extremely important task: embedding suitable educational approaches and instructional techniques for specific learning outcomes and student profiles into the scenario, so that the game will be played without losing the fun and attractive part of it. In the current analysis, a framework for GBL that is applicable for 200 maritime professionals is presented; the specific application is related to navigational safety training, and the respective framework is a 3D real-time strategy game called 'Trader of the World' (TotW-alpha version). The game is designed for already competent adult seafarers as well as undergraduate students of maritime academies/institutions and it is applied in nonformal educational settings. A demonstration of this game has already taken place at the undergraduate level; results, evaluations, and opinions provided by the participants were used as the basis for discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency response, crew resource, and crisis management are important aspects of maritime education and training (MET). The authors of this article approach these aspects, utilizing enhanced simulation-based team training. The authors argue that an effective way to gain experience and achieve corresponding skills are practice runs on specially designed simulators that realistically represent complex conditions on-board vessels, following emergency alerts. The article introduces the concept of a safety and security training simulator and describes the research work related to the implementation of a learning objective-oriented development of simulation training scenarios and the pedagogic value added by simulation to MET. Results of a simulation case study are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maritime user interfaces for ships' bridges are highly dependent on the context in which they are used, and rich maritime context is difficult to recreate in the early stages of user-centered design processes. Operations in Arctic waters where crews are faced with extreme environmental conditions, technology limitations and a lack of accurate navigational information further increase this challenge. There is a lack of research supporting the user-centered design of workplaces for hazardous Arctic operations. To meet this challenge, this paper reports on the process of developing virtual reality-reconstructed operational scenarios to connect stakeholders, end-users, designers, and human factors specialists in a joint process. This paper explores how virtual reality-reconstructed operational scenarios can be used as a tool both for concept development and user testing. Three operational scenarios were developed, implemented in a full mission bridge simulator, recreated in virtual reality (VR), and finally tested on navigators (end-users). Qualitative data were captured throughout the design process and user-testing, resulting in a thematic analysis that identified common themes reflecting the experiences gained throughout this process. In conclusion, we argue that operational scenarios, rendered in immersive media such as VR, may be an important and reusable asset when supporting maritime design processes and in maritime training and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]