Developing multidisciplinary blended learning courses for maritime education with cross-European collaboration

Continuous training is considered nowadays as a key issue for the evolution of people being at professional and personal levels, enhancing productivity, employability, and social stability in a globally competitive world. Furthermore, the introduction of new technologies, the imposition of new regulations in the maritime industry and the growing challenges at port, shipping and logistics level increase the demand for new educational schemes. Concerning the market needs, TrainMoS II and On the MoSway Network (OTMW-N) European projects aimed for the development of student and professional’s skills and laid the foundations for a cross-European maritime educational programme. TrainMoS II was the evolution of the TrainMoS project, improving the existing tools and covering a whole new range of technical and operational topics, including alternative fuels and technologies, logistics and safety issues such as damage control, evacuation and crisis management operations. TrainMoS II covered also the provision of blended vocational education to undergraduates and professionals who belong to different sectors in the multimodal transport chain. Both projects focused on the establishment of an educational framework facilitating the collaboration between industry and academia and used advanced ICT tools to match the maritime market needs with the training provision and to develop new and enriched content for the online platform with learning material and knowledge for both professionals and students. In the present study, the outcomes and experiences gathered from running the aforementioned projects are presented and discussed for their potential impact on the maritime industry.