Advance use of training simulator in maritime education and training: A questionnaire study

Abstract

Simulator training has seen its growth and effectiveness since last two decades across all socio-technical complex systems including maritime. The adaption of simulator training in Maritime Education and Training has been well embraced in the education programs, as they provide enhanced learning, as well as possibilities of simulating abnormalities and malfunctions. One way of understanding the impact and benefits of various features of training/education simulators is by the user themselves. This can be achieved by a well-designed questionnaire study, which is the focus of this work. An experiment was designed and conducted to investigate the effect on learning outcome based on the realistic currents in the simulator, which was compared with those who were trained with simple (uni-directional) currents. Apart from objective performance indicators – e.g., cross track error, speed, etc. – a questionnaire was developed and conducted to acquire various parameters that are linked to overall performance and learning of the participants.