Communication And Practical Training Applied In Nautical Studies
Project CAPTAINS aims to transfer innovation and to conjugate existing knowledge concerning linguistic, paralinguistic, cultural and discourse formation issues acting as barriers in ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore-to-ship and crew communication in the multi-cultural context of a ship particularly since over 75% of ships are now multilingual. 80% of maritime accidents are imputable to human factors, of which failure of communication represents one third. The IMO has also underlined the importance of effective communication as a crucial issue for marine safety while communicative language used in the context of real-life situations has hardly been part of any Maritime Education and Training (MET) curriculum.
The main goals of the project are to:
- contribute to an enhanced safety at sea culture by improving English communication skills, oral or written, in order to deal with safety issues and real-life critical situations emerging from English communication problems and diverse cultures due to multi-national ship crews.
- transfer innovations by combining advanced e-learning and collaboration tools, already existing at AIT, with interactive rich media learning contents created as the result of aim 1, taking into consideration scenario-based and experiential learning. State of the art technologies such as 2D/3D virtual and interactive simulators allow users to be active, interact and socialise with others, be represented as digital entities, etc. thus significantly reducing the learning curve and the time needed for transferring of skills, a key issue in competence-based and learning by doing.
