Tasks and instructions on the simulated bridge: Discourses of temporality in maritime training

Abstract

In higher education programs that train students for professions with high standards of safety, such as aviation, shipping and healthcare, exercises in simulated environments provide opportunities for training in educational settings. This study explores the use of simulators in maritime education, taking an interest in how navigation training is achieved by using simulated environments. By conducting an interaction analysis of video data, the study examines how training students to coordinate with other vessels in traffic is topicalized in simulator exercises, focusing on discourses of temporality in instructions. The results show how instruction during simulations is a continuous interactional achievement built on the ability to assess the fit between the assessment criteria at work in the specifics of the situation and the ongoing tasks as they unfold. During simulations temporality becomes a matter for instruction, both when assessing how to develop the students’ understanding and as a topic in its own right. The results highlight tightly coupled relationships among tasks, instruction and technology. The implications for simulator-based training call for refocusing on training tasks rather than specific skills, and emphasize the importance of professional guidance in order to guide the students toward the discourses of maritime work practice in simulator-based training.

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

“…These occasions were not part of the observation and interview part of the competence test. In previous studies on simulator-based maritime training, the instructors' monitoring of students' ongoing activities makes it possible to attend to specific details of the students' conduct, which lays the ground for making assessments (Sellberg & Lundin, 2017;Sellberg & Lundin, 2018). Such assessments represent a continuous and on-going process that is grounded in the instructors' abilities to recognize the fit or gap between the learning objectives and the students' activities in the simulator.…”

“…While the training sessions on the bridge operation simulator have been analyzed in prior studies (e.g. Sellberg & Lundin, 2017;Sellberg & Lundin 2018), this study draws on video data from simulator-based competence tests at the end of the course. During competence tests students are being certified on using Radar and ARPA equipment in different traffic and weather conditions, which is one of the learning objectives.…”

“…In contrast, studies adopting a situated approach to cognition and learning technical and non-technical skills are viewed as inherently intertwined and difficult, if not impossible, to separate in the navigational work trained and assessed in simulators (see e.g. Hontvedt, 2015;Sellberg & Lundin, 2018). For example, Sellberg and Lundin (2018) found that episodes which at first glance seemed to consist of quite technical instructions on the use of radar technologies and of keeping a safe distance to other vessels, when analyzed in detail the episodes entailed instructions on so-called non-technical skills such as situation awareness and decision-making.…”

“…Hontvedt, 2015;Sellberg & Lundin, 2018). For example, Sellberg and Lundin (2018) found that episodes which at first glance seemed to consist of quite technical instructions on the use of radar technologies and of keeping a safe distance to other vessels, when analyzed in detail the episodes entailed instructions on so-called non-technical skills such as situation awareness and decision-making. The analytical focus on interactional details is characteristic to the situated approach, drawing on the method of systematic video analysis of naturally occurring learning practices to render knowledge and competencies observable in work practices (Stahl, 2005).…”

Learning to navigate: the centrality of instructions and assessments for developing students’ professional competencies in simulator-based training

“…3). Similarly, in Sellberg and Lundin (2017b), the analysis shows how training coordination with other vessels in maritime traffic is sequentially organised in the simulator exercises, specifically focussing on the matter of temporality in instructional sequences. This means that assessments rely on the temporality of being either prospective or retrospective evaluations of the student's actions, because different temporalities offer different social and material conditions for their production.…”