Traditionally, maritime training/education has been carried out in an in-class environment, even though there are a limited number of successful cases of maritime distance (including online) training. One of the reasons explaining this traditional approach may be the fact that the industry is so much dependent on business relationships between individuals.
The March – June 2020 confinement, taking place due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, shifted education/training from the physical to the virtual environment where all lecturers/trainers have been forced into a new lecturing/teaching situation. However, as as we move into the future, the industry needs to adapt to this new context, and the COVID-19 Pandemic will undoubtedly bring some changes even in the maritime training/education environment.
It is clear from a resources perspective that this educational/training segment has evolved considerably. New training concepts, methodologies and the range of available technologies are available in the market. The positive point of this evolutionary path is that the Internet holds a range of vast (and useful) resources either developed by individuals or organisations (including Universities).
With this in mind, we question the extent to which the maritime education/training was prepared to 1) deal with this shift and 2) incorporate this vast range of available online resources to keep education/training moving. Therefore, the objective of the survey is to study the integration of online education/training in global maritime education/training context. At the moment that a new school year is about to begin, this assessment is still critical, since there are still challenges to be faced as it is unknown how the COVID -19 Pandemic will evolve.
As such, we welcome you to participate in the online survey presented below. Please be assured that all individual responses will be held in the strictest confidence, and no specific details about Respondents’ and/or Institutions will be reported. Only the authors of this research (I and my colleague Amelia Loja) will have access to the information/data gathered, and therefore, risks to respondents are minimal. Moreover, the survey bears no costs.
The success of this research depends upon your feedback!