Can colleges revolutionise training in time?

The Maritime Skills Commission (MSC) was established in 2020 by the Department for Transport and Maritime UK to ensure a pipeline of talented seafarers with the right skills for the future.

In June 2021, the MSC released its Seafarer Cadet Review report, which recommended modernisation of courses and an overhaul of funding for seafarer training. Rob Coston, Helen Kelly and Saffiyah Khalique find out what colleges and other educational institutions are doing to ensure the UK can continue to offer world-class training now and in the future.

The Cadet Training & Modernisation Oversight Committee was launched in October to oversee any syllabus changes, with Nautilus general secretary Mark Dickinson participating and Department for Transport director of maritime Petra Wilkinson as chair.

The Maritime Skills Commission (MSC) was set up in 2020 as part of the government's Maritime 2050 strategy. Its role is to ensure there is a pipeline of talented people to serve all parts of the industry, and this is overseen by a working group of commissioners including Nautilus International general secretary Mark Dickinson.

In a report released last year it made several recommendations, some of which are expected to be tackled in the short term over one to five years, others over a 15-year period.

We talked to some of the UK's leading maritime educational providers – including those offering cadet training, further education, and sector-specific courses for superyacht professionals – to find out how they are meeting the educational challenges of the moment, how they coped with Covid, and how they intend to tackle longer-term goals.

Why modernise?

Nautilus International has long campaigned for and promoted access to good quality maritime training for people from all backgrounds, and advocates for equal opportunities to career progression for all maritime professionals.

That includes training in the new technologies and new processes to achieve decarbonisation of the world economy. Nautilus strongly backs this effort and believes maritime training should reflect environmental goals.

The good news is that much has already been achieved, and colleges are clearly investing in technology and attempting to apply lessons learned in the pandemic to new problems.

Kathryn Neilson, director of the Merchant Navy Training Board – the central industry body for sector-specific education, says there is a recognition of the need to modernise training.

'We have superb training in this country, a great foundation, but have been very lax at updating it and ensuring we’re relevant for the future,' she says. 'With the rapid change in technology we’ve decided we need to get on with this or risk being left behind. What is going to come out of this good work is a really top-class training programme that will be able to create the seafarers of the future.'

'There's a lot of course content that is obsolete now. We need more regular reviews of whether the content is fit for purpose, listening to industry, to the end user, to the cadets, and what they’re saying,' Ms Neilson says.

'We are looking at management skills and transferable skills,’ Ms Neilson adds. 'We should look at what we can implement now to show that our cadets can compete in a global market. Meta skills – flexibility, communications, critical thinking, teamwork. Once we’ve got those right, the shipping companies themselves can train the seafarers to work with the new technology.'

Course content

What, precisely, does 'modernisation' mean in this context?

Some traditional skills might be partially replaced or supplemented with an emphasis on new technology – including how to run automated systems or how to deal with new fuels like ammonia or hydrogen, which come with unique challenges and safety implications.

Of course, removing traditional content from a course to make room for new learning is always controversial. Ms Nielson provides an example:

'One of the big hot topics to remove is celestial navigation. Perhaps it shouldn’t be removed entirely, but sextants are now no longer a legal requirement on board, so why are we spending 60 hours [per course] on it? It is important to include but shouldn't be a focus.'

However, given the pace of technological change and the uncertainties around, for example, which new fuels might be common in future, some direct practical training might be supplemented with skills to help future-proof cadets.

While it may be acknowledged that the curriculum needs to reflect working conditions and new technology, this will take time to adjust and is dependent on the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), which signs off on the compulsory curriculum. Meanwhile, soft skills can be taught right now.

For example, James Potipher, superyacht cadetship manager at United Kingdom Sailing Academy (UKSA), says: 'We spend a lot of time with students in teaching leadership, above and beyond the requirements for the OOW 3000gt ticket. We place emphasis on giving the student responsibility from day one, and have a structured mentoring scheme in place to progress these skills during the time on the course.'

John Wyborn – co-founder and director of Bluewater, a yacht brokerage, charter and management company that offers training (though not cadetships), agrees that leadership training is gaining in popularity.

'We see massively more interest in leadership training – especially among young people – and our management courses have the highest feedback,' he says.

He also serves as a voice for the sector on the MNTB and Maritime Skills Alliance.

'However, the focus in the industry now is very much on mandatory training. The MCA is alive to this and is very open to change, but there are ramifications to making any changes and they need to be considered carefully.'

Time spent

In line with the MSC, several interviewees expressed concern about one aspect of the traditional curriculum: the 'bums on seats' attitude that cadets must spend a certain amount of time in a classroom on a particular topic to gain their CoC or qualification.

Many hope that in future students will be assessed by competency instead of classroom time; which is perhaps a better measure given that a cadetship is a vocational training programme.

A change from classroom time as a measure of success may also be necessary due to changes in teaching techniques that have been speeded up by the pandemic.

Teaching tech

The MSC has recommended that colleges take advantage of new teaching techniques and technologies to future-proof training.

All institutions had to use these tools in adapting to Covid-19. Some of these adaptations were popular – for example, at South Shields Maritime School students from abroad or trapped aboard vessels during sea time phases were able to continue their courses despite travel restrictions – and it seems that many of the positive lessons of the pandemic have stuck.

MLA College has been offering online-only learning to mid-career maritime professionals for a decade, and was therefore ahead of the game when the Covid pandemic hit.

'During Covid a lot of providers had to adapt quite quickly,' MLA rector John Chudley says. 'They went to online learning, recorded lectures, but that doesn’t necessarily make for a good distance learning experience.'

'We’ve designed everything for distance learning, from the ground up, with feedback from students' Professor Chudley says. 'We have our Total Learning Package (TLP), which is the environment the student works within, which kind of looks like Netflix or another popular platform for accessibility. In there students can dip in and out of lectures and modules, fast forward or slow them down, and all learning materials are backed up with pdf files which allow for annotation. All other learning material, such as backup reading, is also included.'

MLA College offers 'distance' rather than 'online' learning – the TLP is capable of fitting on a memory stick, which neatly gets around the problem of poor connectivity at sea. 

MLA College has students worldwide and does not offer live lectures. However, as well as ensuring all material is made available in 'digital first' format, MLA College provides tutor support via a core set of academics. It also arranges support from experts around the globe in several fields, who can assess and help the individual student with their work, especially when they must produce a dissertation. Professor Chudley emphasises that, while it is easy to get carried away with tech, this tutor support is key to learning.

South Shields Marine School adapted to the pandemic with remote learning and is now looking to take studies online – hopefully with support in funding a shift to blended learning.

'We are looking to develop blended learning, not just remote learning,' says Chris Grey, head of school, marine degrees and certification. 'There are some barriers such as when people away at sea with connectivity issues – there’s no point developing blended learning options for cadets at sea if only half the class can access them.

'Of course, we have also highly skilled staff, but they aren’t necessarily experts in blended learning yet. They can provide the content but we need to develop it into a package. So it will be interesting to see where the funding for that comes from! Will it be left to the colleges or part of the government’s scheme?'

Simulators updated

One thing that clearly stood out in the visits and interviews Nautilus conducted for this special feature was the enormous investment in simulator suites by training facilities and colleges. Every provider we spoke to seems to be moving in this direction.

At Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), for example, there is now a suite consisting of five bridges with a primary bridge configured to a 360° field-of-view, plus a full mission engine room simulator which can be used as a standalone simulator or connected with the bridges to train both deck and engineer officers at the same time.

Meanwhile an ECDIS suite is used in bridge training and is fitted with 10 stations. Beyond meeting the demands for ECDIS training, the facility provides full mission desktop simulation solution for navigational training.

Solent University, meanwhile, has its own impressive simulator suite.

Yet who knows what the future holds? Professor Chudley of MLA College, for example, suggests that virtual reality might one day replace the simulator suite, though for now that technology can't provide a good replacement for in-person teamwork training.

Sea time

The MSC recommends that institutions do more to ensure students get useful training from their sea time phases, and that this is blended properly with their other learning, including simulator time.

'We need to analyse what the sea time actually represents,' says Mel Irving, R&D and advanced simulation manager at South Shields. 'Nothing beats practical experience of the real world, but what we’ve discovered is that there are a lot of instances where a person’s sea time doesn’t actually involve a lot of experience – people at sea are not necessarily involved in situations which extend their knowledge, whereas on the simulator you are putting the person in a situation you want them to be in to gain experience or demonstrate what they have learned.

'The two elements are needed. You can't have one without the other.' This sentiment was echoed by other institutions.