International Maritime Education Forum Held as a Hybrid Event

Submitted by admin on Fri, 12/09/2022 - 12:58

Jointly organized by IMLA and Shanghai Maritime University, sponsored by Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, International Maritime Education Forum was held in a hybrid format with great success on 6 December, 2022. With the theme of “Maritime Education in the Age of Digitalisation”, the Forum attracted over 130 participants from 38 countries.

IMLA Chair, Dr. Alison Noble gave a warm welcome to all the participants and stated that the forum is a good platform to engage interest and encourage exchange on the impacts and application of the irreversible digitalisation in MET. As the newly-elected Chair, she expressed heartfelt thanks to her predecessor Prof. JIN Yongxing for his instrumental role to promote IMLA’s sound development in the last eleven years. After having reviewed the activities of IMLA in the last year, she made an introduction of the new restructured IMLA Committee members and encouraged all to continue contributing to the Association’s future work.

In his keynote speech, Dr. Bekir Sitki Ustaoglu, Head of Asia and Pacific Section of the Technical Cooperation Division of IMO, said the theme of the Forum is timely considering the profound changes the accelerated application of digitalisation and automation bring to the maritime sector. He introduced the efforts made by IMO in recent years on the regulatory aspects to accommodate the changes due to the specialized use of technology and stressed in particular the importance of the upcoming review of the STCW Convention. He encouraged the Association to continue utilizing its unique consultative status with IMO and to promote greater cooperation and collaboration at national, regional and international levels.

A host of guest speakers including Mr. Jan Frølgaard, Manning Advisor of Danish Maritime Authority, Prof. Takeshi Nakazawa, Chair of IMLA-ICERS & Executive Director of IAMU, Prof. Momoko Kitada of World Maritime University made their keynote speeches successively, addressing issues respectively on digital certificate for seafarers, the essence of digitalisation competence for seafarers and its inclusion into MET curricula, the changing roles of maritime lecturers and the additional prerequisite skills they need in the age of digitalisation.

During the follow-up panel discussion moderated by Dr. Alison Noble, panelists from IMLA committee Capt. Quentin Cox, Prof. Michael Baldauf, Dr. Pelin Bolat and Mr. Michael Amon shared with participants in depth their viewpoints on the challenges and advantages digitalisation may bring to MET and presented the experimental practices of using digital tools in different learning and teaching contexts at their institutions.

The forum concluded with the announcement of IMLA 28 Conference and a presentation by Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy in Bulgaria on its arrangements.