Critical success factors for user satisfaction with online training tools for safety and security training in port facilities

ABSTRACT

Ports experienced increasing complexity over the past decades, both in terms of legal issues and increasing usage of technology. The covid-19 pandemic rose the demand for distance education as traditional classrooms are declining due to cost- and hygiene aspects. Online education contains a valuable basis for the education of staff in applied industrial settings, where safety and security (SaS) education has proven necessary but challenging to conduct. Studies have already revealed that existing SaS regulations consist of vague and confusing suggestions that often lack applicable trainings, leading port operators to conduct best practice and minimum compliance approaches. This study sheds light on a crucial research gap among online education literature, being the absence of applied quantitative evaluations. A majority of studies took place among higher education students but not in the operational field of white- and blue-collar environments. Based upon mixed-methods of qualitative and quantitative triangulation, this paper reveals critical success factors for satisfaction with online training tools and their implementation in applied industrial settings. Among the most salient results, a three-factor model is found to be significant including the lack of appropriate content, learner’s reluctance towards e-learning and learner’s general PC skills. Moreover, gender, age, and period of employment impact learner’s perception of e-learning in port operations.

KEYWORDS:

• E-learning
• online education
• safety and security education
• small and medium sized enterprise
• critical success factors
• port safety and security
• port staff education

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the assistance of a German service provider for the maritime industry allowing access to its e-learning system as well as anonymized education data.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03088839.2022.2124465