Abstract:

Digital skills have become increasingly important in various sectors such as marine transportation. Changing job demands require the proficiency in digital skills to thrive in an increasingly complex 21st century work environments. Maritime domain has witnessed steady changes in the way education and training are delivered for preparing its future workforce. Novel ways of e-learning and mobile-assisted learning solutions have the potential to transform educational models and facilitate innovation in learning processes. Recently, impact due to Covid-19 and mitigation measures towards continuation of educational delivery also led to accelerated efforts to integrate technology in the maritime classrooms. The prospective maritime students and their digital skills will play a key role in this arena.

The evaluation of the digital skills of maritime students can promote efforts toward greater digital literacy and in turn optimal utilization of novel learning sources. In this study, we utilized a standard and validated scale – Youth Digital Skills Indicator (yDSI) to evaluate the digital skills of students from a major maritime manpower supplying nation - the Philippines.

The digital skills of the maritime students were evaluated along four dimensions:
(1) Technical and operational skills
(2) Information navigation and processing skills
(3) Communication and interaction skills and
(4) Content creation and production skills.

A total number of 234 valid responses were obtained in this research study. The findings illustrate the relative scores of the students in these four dimensions of digital skills. Furthermore, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was also carried out to assess the measurement model. The statistical findings such as the measurement model fit indices and the descriptive results shed light on the level of digital skills for maritime students in the selected country and can inform the Maritime Education and Training (MET) stakeholders on the potential challenges associated with the digitalization of maritime education.

Keywords:

Digital skills, Maritime Education and Training, Digitalization, Technology integration.