TERP just joined a new EU Horizon research project as one of eight European partners. The project called i-Master aims to provide learning analytics from ship simulation exercises. One of the challenges identified is to enable simulator instructors to give more detailed and meaningful feedback during debriefing.
The project is at a very early stage, with many significant research choices pending. However, a part of the scope is to develop a dashboard providing data on how the students perform. A typical simulation exercise involves three steps: briefing, simulation, and debriefing. Simulator instructors have expressed that monitoring all relevant input during a simulation is challenging. Given that we will successfully capture relevant data and present it as relevant information in a dashboard, we will enable the instructors to give students more detailed and meaningful feedback during debriefing.
The most basic learning analytics is descriptive statistics. In this case, that would provide insight into a past simulation exercise. Typically that would be a visual presentation of statistics based on the collected data. The first version of the dashboard would likely provide descriptive analysis, but we aim higher. The next step would be to provide diagnostic statistics. While descriptive statistics tell you what happened, diagnostic analysis reveals more about why it happened.
We plan to utilize artificial intelligence in the project, specifically machine learning. The combination of machine learning, immersive learning, and the maritime context, fits very well with our other research projects and the customers we serve. We expect spin-offs from the project materialized as new features to improve value for our customers within maritime education and training.
The Arctic University of Norway coordinates the project. Besides TERP, the other partners are the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Fraunhofer CML (Germany), Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, University of South-Eastern Norway, Novia University of Applied Sciences (Finland), and Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria). The project will run for four years and has 3,3 million Euros in funding from the European Union.
