Page 11: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 2022)

in their complexity. If a vessel’s system is in? uenced by an ex- Despite our best efforts, we cannot train and assess for every ternal contextual factor or does not respond as expected, how situation. Therefore, the next best thing we can do is to train can we train our mariners to respond accordingly in such a com- and assess the knowledge which will help mariners do their job plex, novel situation? well, and provide them with the necessary tools to react intel-

The answer is by ensuring that our mariners have the knowl- ligently when an unexpected situation arises. This is the age of edge that underlies the skill, and the ability to reason and ap- the “knowledge worker” - and the maritime industry has en- ply their knowledge to the novel situation being encountered. tered this age. We need to prepare our knowledge workers for

Today, this also means that mariners require at least a basic the job. understanding of the complex systems they will be relying on So - which is the more critical training focus - knowledge or when performing their skills. This need for knowledge is going skills? Clearly both are critical. Safety depends on it.

to continually increase in scope, depth and importance as the role of the mariner and our vessel-based systems similarly in-

The Author crease in their complexity. To a degree, mariners must become knowledge workers, using their knowledge to continually adapt to novel situations. In a nutshell, skill is not suf? cient, an in-

Goldberg creasing amount of knowledge is required as well. The deeper

Murray Goldberg is CEO of Marine the knowledge, the more readily adaptable the person is to more

Learning Systems.

Email: [email protected] widely ? uctuating conditions.

SERVICES

MOBILE • SAN DIEGO • SINGAPORE austalusa.com www.marinelink.com 11

MR #1 (1-17).indd 11 1/7/2022 3:53:57 PM