a new maritime education model

Kalyan Chatterjea, Singapore Maritime Academy

Narrowing the Gap between the Shipowners’ Requirements &

Maritime Administrations’ Certificate of Competency

Asia Pacific Maritime 2008 Conference 27-28 March at Singapore Expo

Training of Shipboard Manpower I am truly honoured to be

given a chance to address this significant gathering of international maritime professionals!

I shall raise some of the key issues in manpower training brought up by many in this industry.

Then present a case study at SMA, which is trying to address some of these issues.

Asia Pacific Maritime 2008 Conference 27-28 March at Singapore Expo, Kalyan Chatterjea

Training of Shipboard ManpowerStructure of preparatory courses for the Certificate

of Competency (COC) went through many changes over the years.

Emphasis of knowledge competency-based structures after implementation of STCW 95 is making these courses focused towards the competency requirements at sea.

Yet in many maritime forums and literature we encounter numerous instances when shipowners and ship mangers complain about the inadequate competencies of seafarers.


Training of Shipboard ManpowerIt becomes clear that the maritime education

and training (MET) institutions are not doing enough to keep pace with the rapid changes in the industry.

Shipping companies are allocating large budgets in developing their own training centres & courses.

However, with the present high turn over of manpower in the maritime sector, this strategy is sometimes questioned.


Training of Shipboard ManpowerPerhaps, if a system is put in place whereby

the knowledge and proficiencies taught at the MET institutions are dynamically updated

to be in-phase with shipboard changes, the value of COC could be enhanced

And the gap between the shipowners’/ ship managers’ requirements and the knowledge and proficiency imparted at the MET institutions could be narrowed.


Shipowners’ & Ship Managers’ ViewsAt ESCAP in Bangkok Captain Masako Nakaya, Senior Manager of

Crewing, NYK Shipmanagement PTE Ltd., Japan provided the Forum with insights on the perspectives of the shipowners.

He said “…Certificates are not sufficient to prepare the seafarer for the conditions directly linked to the specific needs of different shipowners”.

NYK is therefore developing their own training centres.


Shipowners’ & Ship Managers’ ViewsMr. Rajaish Bajpaee, President and Group

Managing Director, Eurasia Group of Companies raised the dilemma of investing in training at the 16th LSM Ship Management Conference 2006.

He further claimed in his speech that a certificate of competency or qualification is not always a proof of true competency.


Shipowners’ & Ship Managers’ ViewsMr. Bajpaee further stated ‘Despite the efforts of some ship managers

and owners in investing millions of dollars on the latest technology and the best training centres to attract and train the young professionals, some players continue to wonder about the wisdom of ploughing time and money into training when in the blink of an eye they see some of their more promising prospects are “poached” by an industry rival who does not bother to invest in training.’


Extract of a Slide from Capt. Jan Horck’s (WMU) Presentation at NTU


Maritime Education beyond STCW 95


Dr. Neil Otway, CEO/Principal, Australian Maritime College, addressing this issue, said that most maritime education institutions now recognise

that STCW95 should only be seen as a minimum requirement for seafarers’.

Higher level skills and qualifications are needed by seafarers, worldwide, if the International Maritime Organisation’s desire for ‘safer shipping and cleaner seas’ is to be achieved (Otway, 2004).



Prof. Captain Ralph Becker-Heins of Bremen University of Applied Sciences reported (Becker-Heins, 2006) a novel approach to maritime education, entitled Collaborative Maritime Knowledge And Training Systems, This is funded as a EU Pilot Project and called Honeycomb Database

under Leonardo da Vinci Programme. They are trying to implement a system for seafarers to capture, store

and disseminate information. Useful information is retrieved from documents, processes and some

crucial knowledge, which may actually remain in peoples’ heads.



Present practices of competency-based training for COC Courses in MET institutions, do not normally allow for knowledge sharing, knowledge renewal or dynamic creation of knowledge, which could keep pace with the changes in engineering

practices on board. could lead to a maritime model of education, where

learners would be active partners in developing a dynamic knowledge-creation system capturing shipboard practices and

the resulting system can adequately serve the maritime industry in producing truly competent seafarers, equipped with updated shipboard practices.



Classroom structure and environment, maintained in most MET institutions, promotes mainly transmission mode of learning.

Trainees coming out of such environment are likely to lack analytical skills.

Knowledge Lab at Singapore Maritime Academy for Steam COC Course


Knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, cooperative learning& online assessmentat the Steam COC course at SMA.



In SMA’s Knowledge Lab, learning is by doing. Given a chance learners prefer active learning rather than passive listening.

This is found to be more applicable to our senior students attending the Certificate of Competency (COC) courses as compared to the new entrants, who have no sea-going experience.

Knowledge lab is used in a conversion course for engineers Motorship COC to Steamship COC for LNG carriers.



Social validation of knowledge at the Steam COC course at SMA.



Formative, on-demand, online, networked assessments, which are interspaced between learning sessions.

Steam COC Course Assessment Strategy


Shipboard Knowledge Capture


A crucial part of the course is the shipboard componentwhere the learners append their individual portfolios

while capturing the procedural knowledge. The assignments are given on the course Blog: http://lngsteam.blogspot.com



ExtractFromBlog



While shipboard technologies and procedures evolve rapidly with changing times,

Changes in content at the MET institutions lag behind due to the content being generated, mainly from books and published literature

Consequently the value of the Certificate of Competency acquires a negative gradient in the minds of the shipowners and ship managers.



Yet the easiest channels of capturing knowledge from the practitioners are rarely tapped.

Management-level students, with recently acquired rich shipboard exposures, join MET institutions in each Semester to receive procedural knowledge, which, in most instances, is dated.

The age-old institutional practices of catering unidirectional knowledge-transmission towards the learners are difficult to moderate.

We remain satisfied living in our comfort zone.



In this Steam COC course at SMA an avenue is created (see Table 1, last row) to tap this rich experiential knowledge,

readily available from the seafarers at management level, through shipboard assignments.

The process ploughs back the latest procedural knowledge into the MET institute, thereby keeping the content dynamically updated.

The core knowledgebase grows incrementally and over time has the potential to become a large source of knowledge with logical concept-map-based access points, which could be tapped by both learners and practitioners.

Knowledge-based Certificate of Competency


I would like to claim that such course structures might provide some answers to the gap in competency between knowledge and proficiency acquired at MET institutions and the real requirement at sea.

This experiment is being done in a small scale at SMA.

With the support from the industry similar courses could be started for our Motorship COC as well!

Thank you!


a new maritime education model

Economy & Finance