A Network of Experts for Sharing MET Knowledge

Annual General Assembly 2005 - Malmö

Section 3

A Network of Experts for Sharing MET Knowledge - It Works!

Sauli AHVENJÄRVI
Sector for Technology and Maritime Management,
Satakunta Polytechnic, Rauma, Finland

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the NetOSKAR project and the experience gained from establishing and running an international network of maritime training professionals for the development of a knowledge assessment tool on STCW-95 subjects. At the present, the network consists of training professionals in MET institutes in five different countries. The goal is to build a large database of multiple-choice questions for testing knowledge on STCW-95 subjects. Each specialist, i.e. question producer, has access to the internet-based development tool and can enter new questions to the question database. Other specialists on the same STCW-95 subject will check and comment the questions. After this quality control the new questions are approved and become available to all members of the network. This activity, the NetOSKAR project, was begun in 2003. The project is managed by Satakunta Polytechnic, Finland and the other partners are Svendborg International Maritime Academy from Denmark, Technical University of Catalonia from Spain, Maritime University of Szczcecin from Poland, Escola Náutica Infante D. Henrique from Portugal and the University of Turku from Finland. At the moment, there are 21 question producers with about 1000 new questions added yearly to the database.

There is a great potential in this kind of activity. A network of MET experts could, for example, develop and share complete e-learning modules on STCW-95 subjects. In the future, the NetOSKAR project will be extended by inviting MET institutes all over the world and new training professionals to join the network. Also new forms of sharing knowledge will be developed.

Keywords: Knowledge assessment, training of seafarers, e-learning, network of experts.