Abstract:

There are many challenges facing the Marine Education and Seafaring sector today. The most notable of these are global seafarer shortages, the need for standardisation and therefore the transferability of qualifications and skills across borders and around the globe, and the necessity to find ways to effectively adjust to and lead the MET sector as it adapts to the new era of increasing technology-driven training, digitalisation and blended teaching and learning practices. The primary goals of the Erasmus+ Euro-ZA Maritime Education and Training (MET) Capacity Building Project are to facilitate the multi-national and transcontinental cooperative develop of innovative MET knowledge systems and the effective exchange and transfer of good practices in the field of MET. This will create optimal conditions for the continued collaborative development of the highest quality of MET in the higher education sectors of the four participating countries - Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The six partner institutions (three from Europe and three from South Africa) are collaborating on three main MET priority areas, namely the comparison and development of curricula, pedagogical processes, and training facilities. The long term project vision is the offering of unique personal and professional development, mobility and partnership opportunities for staff and students, thereby ensuring that the partner institutions can collaboratively make high quality, innovative contributions to the improvement and global coordination of cutting edge MET in order to effectively meet the challenges of the 21st century and to play a strong leadership role in the increasingly complex global field of marine engineering and seafaring. This paper will share the way this collaboration developed and unfolded, challenges that were faced (particularly during Covid-19 pandemic conditions), lessons that were learnt and advances that were made. As a reflection on an international higher education collaboration project, with exchange, mobility and technology transfer aspects, this paper will speak directly to the conference theme and stream ‘Collaboration Projects and Networks’.

Keywords:

Marine education, seafaring, standardisation, qualification, mobility, technology transfer, collaboration.