Certifying Navigational Skills: A Video-based Study on Assessments in Simulated Environments

Journal article, 2019

In Maritime Education and Training (MET) where students are trained for professions with high standards of safety, the use of simulators is taken to provide opportunities for safe and cost-effective training. Although the use of simulators for training and certifying technical proficiency and so-called non-technical skills is well established and regulated by international standards, previous research suggests that simulator-based assessment has been poorly implemented in the MET system. Now the challenge is to contribute with knowledge about how to conduct consistent, unbiased, and transparent assessments of navigational skills and competencies. However, in current research it is not evident how training of non-technical skills in simulated environments should be assessed. The aim of this study is to explore the pedagogical challenges instructors face when assessing students' navigational skills and competencies in a simulated environment. The study is based on video-recorded data from the certification part in a navigation course for second year master mariner students. A situated approach to cognition and learning is employed to analyze the co-construction of assessment in the simulated exercises by means of instructors' questions and students' answers. Results reveal an assessment practice where the students are still developing their navigational skills with instructional support from examiners whilst being certified on using Radar equipment in accordance to COLREG.