USN conducted the 5th workshop

Panel discussion session.
Associate Professor Salman Nazir leading the Panel discussion at the 5th Workshop on Training and Assessment.

On June 6th, the 5th Workshop on Training and Assessment, funded by the MARKOM 2020 project, took place at University College of Southeast Norway’s Vestfold Campus. The theme of the workshop was “Integrating Emerging Technologies into Education, Training and Assessment”.

The overall goal of the workshop was to foster discussion and knowledge exchange on how emerging technologies are currently utilized and how they can be further exploited and applied within the maritime industry.

Common ground

"These workshops have been an important common ground for educators, researchers and practitioners to collaborate and learn from each other. It’s motivating to see the commonalities in interests and work we share", says professor Tareq Ahram, at University of Central Florida.

The workshop organizers was Associate Professor Salman Nazir and Administrative Head Sanda Knutson from the Training and Assessment Research Group (TARG) who were pleased to welcome the participants from 12 institutions, representing researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government organizations. The list of speakers also included, Dr. Tareq Ahram from Institute of Advanced Systems Engineering, University of Central Florida, Christen Vagle from BW Offshore Norway, Dr. Guoyuan Li from department of Ocean Operations and Civil Engineering, NTNU Norway and many others. Several students from Masters in Maritime Management program at USN also participated in the workshop.

 

Focus on technologies to maritime pedagogy and systems

Workshop presentations and panel discussions focused on the applications of current and future potential technologies to maritime pedagogy and systems. This included a diverse range of topics including: virtual and augmented reality, autonomous technologies, enhancing communication and teamwork, and e-learning and online platforms in maritime education. Fruitful discussions led to a cross-cultural understanding of how emerging technologies can, and are being utilized across differing types of industries, research and educational applications, both presently and in the future.

"Attending the workshop was a pleasantly satisfying experience for me. I have been able to communicate the needs of industry directly to the relevant experts in academia as well as gather knowledge about modern, feasible and practical maritime training and assessment solutions", says HC Manager Christen Vagle at BW offshore.

The workshop commenced with an address from Prof. Salman Nazir highlighting the research efforts being undertaken by USN within the framework of MARKOM2020 and with a brief recap of previous workshops on training and assessment.

The participant speakers then took the centre stage and delivered stimulating talks followed by synergistic discussions. Prof. Tareq Ahram accentuated the development cycle of AR and VR technologies, with particular attention placed on the growth of AR technologies and applications compared to the VR market. This was followed by a talk from Dr. Guoyuan Li where he walked through the audience with an experiment utilizing communication and vision patterns for assessment of human operators in DP systems.

Mr. Marius Tannum and Mr. William Gyldensten, Lecturers at USN shared updates in development of autonomous sailing vessels and E-Learning as a platform for maritime education respectively, while Dr. Steven Mallam presented research project, InnoTraining, which is investigating the use of VR and AR technologies in maritime education and training.

The workshop concluded with panel discussion session which consisted of academicians and industrial practitioners where they shared their views for optimal integration of emerging technologies for tackling the existing challenges in the maritime domain.