Simulator are not stimulators!
By John G. Denham
After a career at sea and a period of piloting I tried a tour in academia. I was surprised to find that maritime academies, along with other educational institutions were using classrooms furnished with middle school furnishings and tools. Are we teaching kids or future professionals I thought? Mostly the furnishings are still in use. If you treat students like kids, they will act like kids. Therefore, tools and the environment are important.
Involved in continuing education, simulators attracted me. At Marine Safety International, then the fore runner in maritime simulation the concept of simulation (make believe with electronics) was interesting, but unreal. Nature can not be simulated. For the next 10 years I visited simulators in Kings Point, New London, Piney Point, Toledo and San Diego. Each facility emulated the other and the concept of instruction was the same and teaching was partially effective. A critiques of students indicated, it’s great, but not the same.
Why doesn’t simulation prepare one for the real experience?
Looking at the COSCO BUSAN pilot house I could not recall any simulator with a similar physical arrangement. A collection of students will have a collection of pilot house arrangements in mind and therefore make believe is initiated. The installed bridge equipment in most cases is unfamiliar and therefore another make believe is instigated etc.
Simulation serves excellent purposes when used to rehearse procedures or test theories, things that are not well known, and specially ship characteristics, tactical diameters in specific conditions and human responses to critical situations. Acceleration and deceleration rates/times are not reliable due to the possible human response factor. I found that using simulation to display a critical maneuver as an illustration is excellent. A competent instructor can interject critical information as it occurs (or in advance) and implant a learning experience without the confusion of interpretation. Most want to be as good as the best. An example that I used: “I am about to show you a simulation of how old Charley Brown approaches the turn and rounds the bend at PotreroTurn to Richmond Inner Harbor.” Shown once, or more as needed with some comments on key points, delivered the lesson.
While engaged with a computer driven problem one is constantly shifting from real experience and computer generated displayed data.
For $1,000,000 American President Lines instituted a three day work shop for all ship masters and promising chief mates and invited USCG, educators and lawyers to attend. The attendees (Captains, mates, visitors and consultants) were divided into small groups and each was given a real accident problem to resolve (prevent and analyze). Some simulation was provided by video tape of simulated scenes of the situation. Realism was stimulated because it was factual.
The final critiques of each workshop indicated an awareness that the master and pilot/ watch officer relationship was essential for safety in critical situations and that masters or persons in charge should act responsibly. Simulation training as presently practiced fails in this most important facet of ship operations management; implant thinking as a process and experience by example.
John Denham is a retired USN Captain, Licensed unlimited Master and Pilot, maritime academy teacher,and author with extensive experience as a marine consultant. He is also author of The Assistant and DD 891.
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"Why doesn’t simulation prepare one for the real experience?
Looking at the COSCO BUSAN pilot house I could not recall any simulator with a similar physical arrangement. A collection of students will have a collection of pilot house arrangements in mind and therefore make believe is initiated. The installed bridge equipment in most cases is unfamiliar and therefore another make believe is instigated etc."
Captain, I disagree with what I think are your conclusions in this paragraph.
1) Just because a simulator does not have a similiar physical arrangement as the next or last vessel you are on does not take away from the decision making tree / situational awareness / watchstanding practices that you must demonstrate in a properly built simulation exercise.
2) What do you mean by "make believe is initiated"? This is not the same thing as belief is suspended.
3) What do you mean by "make believe is instigated, etc."?
Here is the bottom line as I've seen: if the trainee is given the time to become familiar with the buttonology of the simulator equipment, then it will not act as a wall between the trainee and the exercise learning objectives.
When I took my my ship-handling class at Maritime Professional Training in Fort Lauderdale, we were put into quite a few predicaments that we had to work our way out.
Example, you are inbound to New York in the TSS with orders to maintain a constant speed. You make radio arrangements to overtake another vessel that is also in the TSS (the instructor is on the radio of the vessel to be overtaken). The other vessel moves to the outside of the lane but "appears" to pick up speed as you attempt to overtake it; and, now you are approaching a dog-leg and, out of nowhere, you see an outbound vessel that was in the blind spot created by the other vessel.....
It isn't the buttons that I will remember. It is the predicaments that I was set-up for.
Well,
You're trying to peel 2 different onions . .
One is the technical aspects of the simulator, the other is the combination of scenario / instructor / training content. Only when both the technical and instructional aspects of the simulation are aligned, is a simulator truly usable as a training tool.
Otherwise it's like using a TV set as a babysitter . .
I've seen excellent instructors who can't even begin to run an organized training or familiarization scenario in a simulator, as the facility where they teach has never conducted any formal or organized training on how to utilize a simulator to support their course.
They can run the system, but it's like being able to run a bulldozer. You can learn to drive a D9 in about an hour, but try grading a housing development with it . .
Many facilities build their simulator, receive operational training for the system, then just "have at it" with nobody really overseeing the quality or content of the training being performed, and with no overall ongoing plan for how the system could be best utilized (or NOT utilized) to support the desired training.
Simulation, because of it's highly technical and still evolving nature, requires ongoing internal review, assessment, and adjustment by the training facility to insure that the objectives of the training are in fact being met each and every time an exercise is run.
There are limitations to what simulation can do, but most of the time those limitations are as much human as they are technical.
You're trying to peel 2 different onions . .
One is the technical aspects of the simulator, the other is the combination of scenario / instructor / training content. Only when both the technical and instructional aspects of the simulation are aligned, is a simulator truly usable as a training tool.
Otherwise it's like using a TV set as a babysitter . .
I've seen excellent instructors who can't even begin to run an organized training or familiarization scenario in a simulator, as the facility where they teach has never conducted any formal or organized training on how to utilize a simulator to support their course.
They can run the system, but it's like being able to run a bulldozer. You can learn to drive a D9 in about an hour, but try grading a housing development with it . .
Many facilities build their simulator, receive operational training for the system, then just "have at it" with nobody really overseeing the quality or content of the training being performed, and with no overall ongoing plan for how the system could be best utilized (or NOT utilized) to support the desired training.
Simulation, because of it's highly technical and still evolving nature, requires ongoing internal review, assessment, and adjustment by the training facility to insure that the objectives of the training are in fact being met each and every time an exercise is run.
There are limitations to what simulation can do, but most of the time those limitations are as much human as they are technical.
http://www.offsimcentre.no/
I attending a course in February 2008 on a fact finding mission. Very impressive for the offshore industry.