Development of Common Curricula Modules for Merchant Marine Officers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Development of Common Curricula Modules for Merchant Marine Officers

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Recognition, transparency, certification

Project Summary

Maritime shipping industry is one of the most dynamic economic sectors throughout Europe due to the constant changes of its development needs, both technological and regarding human resource. Consequently, education and training of maritime officers has to follow closely the industry’s trends in order to keep pace with the new competencies required by the development of maritime transportation technologies. However, despite the similarities of the European curricula for maritime officers, national specific features of the education systems determine the specialty topics to be widely and unevenly spread within the years of study of the national curricula. Thus, recognition of an entire semester studied abroad (30 credits) was not always possible. The host universities tried to overcome this problem by designing modular curricula. These specific modules developed by the partners for incoming Erasmus students proved that it is possible to approach a more strategic perspective for increasing the compatibility of maritime officers curricula and thus the fluency of mobilities done for a higher quality of European learning.

This project’s main objective is to apply an innovative strategic approach which involves the Development of Common Curricula Modules for Merchant Marine Officers (DECOMAR) for two bachelor level study programmes, Navigation and Electromechanics, for one semester. Commonality of the modules consists in the identical group of Maritime Education and Training courses which will be studied in the same semester of the two curricula addressed.

Thus, these almost identical semesters will be shared by four important actors of the European Maritime Education and Training, that deliver altogether on the European maritime industry’s labor market around 1,500 maritime officers each year, which will be the primary target group. Beyond this one, there is a secondary target group of the third parties interested in the higher competencies ensured by the common modules (i.e. European shipping companies, national maritime authorities, etc., which will benefit from the competencies of the newly trained graduates).

A successful common 30 credits module will open the gate for expanding the duration of them in the future, aiming towards an even greater inter-operability among the partner naval academies/maritime universities. Moreover, joint degree programmes will be extremely feasible in a consortium that share the same curricula, educational infrastructure and high quality standards.

This competencies’ compatibility will eventually have a great impact on the more predictable professional performance of the European maritime officers trained in 4 EU member or partner countries that sum up around 140 million people.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 141546,26 Eur

Project Coordinator

Academia Navala “Mircea cel Batran” & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov Naval Academy
• T. C. Piri Reis Universitesi
• AKADEMIA MARYNARKI WOJENNEJ