Page 99: of Marine News Magazine (September 2013)

The remarkable part about the CMES journey, with- out discounting the sweat equity and ingenuity expended to devise, develop and roll out the systems themselves, is perhaps the amount of latitude that CMES and MEBA administrators gave the team of CMES Interim Director Chuck Eser and CMES Distance Learning Manager Dan Noonan to get the job done. Eser explained, We wanted to do something innovative. MEBA gave us the time and money to do the job right. Sure, this system saves money with remote testing for membership, but it had a long in- cubation period, hence it was not immediately pro? table.? Ultimately, the goal for CMES is to have as many as 500 people attending the online course annually. This level, of course, would go above and beyond the elimination of travel expenses for union membership, but also provides affordable options for any mariner. Far from a self-serving and secretive endeavor, CMES has reached out to countless other schools in any num- ber of ways. Twice the host of e-learning conferences at the CMES School in Maryland in the past few years, their agreement with Prometric also allows the school to act as what Prometric calls an aggregator. What this means is that any school that wants to put a course online and use Prometric to test their students does not have to go to Prometric and sign a 3 year minimum contract to use their testing services. Instead, they can come to CMES and for a nominal fee to package their test, plus a per test fee of approximately $100 per student, they can validate and verify their students tests results independently at over 320 US testing centers (and hundreds more worldwide). This could be part of a schools NMC course submittal or if they just wanted to test their candidates to impartially verify their subject matter knowledge. Eser adds, We are already working with one school in this way and they will have their testing live very soon.? Beyond this, however, CMES needs to produce a minimum number of test can- didates to Prometric annually in order to make the system pay for itself. Dan Noonan told MarineNews in August, Are we there yet? No. We are getting close, though.? The implications of success at CMES in terms of e-Learning cannot be understated for the industry itself. For example, the state maritime academies today largely accom-plish almost all of their STCW training for cadets in-house, but at an enormous annual cost that exceeds $1 million for each. As the European model of training for future of? cers continually impacts STCW requirements, the task only promises to get more onerous down the road. And, packag- ing the maritime academy training package into a tradition-al four-year college experience may soon become a thing of the past ? that is, without e-learning to help deliver that knowledge. Ultimately, a blended education ? combining traditional brick-and-mortar training for hands-on work with the knowledge based component of training delivered online may become the rule, rather than the exception. For now, mariners can, for certain STCW requirements, avoid a ? ve hour round trip drive to their nearest maritime academy for what amounts to a 10 question quiz. Throw in lodging, meals, gas (or airfare) and tolls to the mix and it can add up quickly. Of course, not all mariners will have the bene? t of a testing center located within 50 miles of their home, but the vast majority of U.S. mariners certainly will. Distilled down to its common denominator, CMES simply hopes to improve mariner training outcomes using existing and future technologies. The bene? ts are easy to calculate and include the reduction of training costs, the extension of technical and operational resources, the freeing up of existing training resources to concentrate on innova- tion and core business activities, the use of complementary resources and capabilities, enabling participants to grow and expand more quickly and ef? ciently and, ? nally, the positioning of training schools to expand their training of-ferings into the global market place. Whats not to like? YearTotal EnrolledCrisisCrowdRadarVis.Comms 2012 (#)662925102 2013 (*)13011594515 TOTALS 19640846517 (*) Through six months of 2013 only / (#) Radar & Flasher courses came on line in October and September of 2012 only. MN 99www.marinelink.com MN Sept2013 Layout 96-111.indd 998/29/2013 4:41:03 PM