Two projects focus on Virtual Reality in maritime education

Southampton Solent University’s Warsash Maritime Academy has conducted two studies, WAVE 1.0 and WAVE 2.0 – Working in Augmented and Virtual Environments, aiming to examine the current knowledge relating to the use of virtual reality in maritime education and training.

WAVE 1.0, completed in May 2017, saw development of a VR based training application for the smartphone that can support teaching in the commercial maritime domain, including the superyacht market, and will deliver cost-effective immersive training solutions for enhanced student engagement and experience.

WAVE 1.0 produced:

1. An evaluative summary of the current knowledge relating to the use of virtual reality (VR) in an educational setting.
2. Define the minimum set of requirements to create an immersive training environment using VR by determining the sensory modalities that need to be stimulated, and the level of fidelity required, to support effective training, from which to situate one of six case studies.
3. Design and build a smartphone application (App) to be used to test six maritime industry case studies.

WAVE 2.0, which ran from May 2017 to May 2018, won funding from the International Association of Maritime Institutions and partnered with Marine Institute – School of Maritime Studies – St John’s, Canada; Maritime Studies Faculty of Applied Sciences– Durban University of Technology, South Africa; Navigation Institute of Jimei University, China and Dalian Maritime University, China.

The second project produced a thematic report in connection with the current knowledge relating to the use of virtual reality and multi-modal sensory feedback systems for education and training in comparable high risk industries, while examining the following areas:

• Task performance and feedback;
• Development of student engagement based learning objectives;
• Understanding the learner journey.

The second project namely was more about changing the way millennials are educated, according to Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Gordon Meadow, who has been the principal investigator for both projects.

The output will be to derive a set of recommendations / toolkit of good practice for the use of synthetic teaching and learning activities based empirical data that industry, maritime regulators, training providers and other stakeholders can use to inform seafarer pedagogical practice.