Educating future generations' master mariners: Using visualisation for recreating, assessing, and learning from prior performance in post-simulation debriefings

Paper in proceeding, 2019

This study draws on video recorded data of debriefings in a navigation course to analyse the practical use of visualisation technologies in post-simulation debriefing. The analytical focus is on instructions, i.e. the instructors' use of the playback and interplay with the students. The results show how the playback creates a shared perceptual field to which instructions are directed and navigational problems are elaborated to demonstrate how to coordinate with other ships in confined waters. The meanings of the rules of the sea are hard to teach in abstraction since every decision relies on an infinite number of contingencies that have to be accounted for. The use of visualisations in post-simulation debriefings offers opportunities to portray rules in a context in which their meanings could be tied both to situations as they were actually carried out and to demonstrate more preferable alternatives.