Developing a methodology to investigate the correlation between seafarer students’ perception of authenticity in assessment and their achievement

ABSTRACT

Past research shows seafarer students perceive traditional assessment methods used in maritime education and training (MET) institutes as disengaging, making them adopt surface-learning approaches towards acquiring essential knowledge and skills required for the workplace. Instead of developing skills that may be transferred to shipboard tasks, disengaged seafarer students focus only on achieving the minimum score required to attain a ‘pass’ grade for their certification. In this paper, a quantitative research methodology is developed to investigate seafarer students’ perception of authenticity to workplace tasks in decontextualised traditional assessments versus authentic assessments conducted in real world contexts. The methodology will further correlate the perceptions to student achievement (measured using assessment scores) in the assessment tasks. The paper describes the research design and identifies the ethical issues. Procedures to address validity and reliability of the research are also established. Future research aims to implement the methodology to conduct research in a selected educational institute and a unit of competence. However, this paper acknowledges that the methodology should be replicated in other educational institutes for different units of competence to compare and generalise findings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr Samrat Ghosh is a lecturer in Maritime Training at the Australian Maritime College. His research focuses on investigating the impact of innovative training and assessment methods in seafarer education to improve students’ academic achievement. In this regard, he has also developed a conceptual framework to improve the validity and reliability of assessment.

Marcus Bowles is an adjunct professor at the School of Engineering and Built Environment, Centre for Regional and Rural Futures at Deakin University. He specialises in future skills and innovative models for learning and building future workforce capabilities. He is chair of the Institute for Working Futures, a private company.

Dr Apsara Abeysiriwardhane is a Lecturer in Maritime Engineering at the Australian Maritime College. Her research interest includes maritime education and training, maritime human factors, human-centred design, resilience engineering, and marine technology systems.