"<< Background >>The project mission has aiming to meet the dynamic needs of the stakeholders including students, industry and society, in parallel with the changing professional realities of the modern world from the maritime education sector, by developing a harmonized framework for teaching and research practices within the European Maritime Training and Education system, relying upon academic expertise exchange in learning by simulation methods, with an emphasis on valuing the regional partners potential for education and research, using in joint the simulator facilities and digital learning resources. The project would promote the knowledge transfer between the European Union regions, seeking to build a knowledge “bridge” between the Black Sea and Baltic Sea in areas of education and training, as follow up of previous implemented projects of the partners. The project address to the needs of complying with the STCW 95 requirement in training for partner institutions based on an enhanced future competitiveness, bringing the teaching and learning strategies on a new updated level of digitization. The project will offer an inter-regional joint framework in simulation learning system in maritime education, valuing the potential of developing skills, abilities and responsibilities of the graduates, to stimulate their insertion in the maritime international labor market. By this project, the partners will be granted with access to a larger base of educational resources and training facilities in order to share the networking expertise alongside the European space, increasing their competitiveness as international MET providers. Subsidiary the project is aiming to the need of the job market, for bringing the teaching methods in the new era of digitalization, building new and innovative video tutorials and digital training materials for simulator facilities, to offer full access in time and space for educational processes. In case of the targeted maritime students, blended learning methods and the digital tools will be applied, for enhancing the independence and autonomy of the students, for carrying out the learning process both in the classrooms but also onboard commercial vessels for cadetship. The simulating facility network will also promote harmonized courses that use simulators as: ship handling and maneuvering, engine room operation, cargo handling, safe and rescue or naval communications. Not in the last, the need for internationalization is also to be covered by offering a broad range of cooperation, valuing previous projects results.<< Objectives >>MARS-NET will aim to achieve a strategic network for joint partners' facilities and teaching/learning practices exchange, seeking to obtain by implementation such significant results on following directions:- training skills improvement of the trainers, by good practices exchanges on different simulators offered by the partners, implementing a digital teaching framework for hard skills achievement - harmonized methodology for training resources to be achieved (see the model attached: ""Meodologie_scenarii_training_simulator.pdf"");- dual education enhancement by developing the cadets’ abilities for online training on simulator facilities, using the digital resources in their training, onboard the ships during the cadetship - adaptation of present syllabuses and simulation exercises;- building teaching resources for simulating exercises to digitize the teaching and training environment as a valuable supporting feature for “blending learning” methods enhancement, including a manu (see the attachment: ""Manual_tutoriale_video simulator_ANMB.pdf"");- implementing harmonized training modules in order to value the partners’ experience, facilities and good practices into the network (with an emphasis on the particular aspects of the targeted regions), continuing previous strategic partnership projects as DECOMAR, MARINE, MENTORESS or BLUE4SEAS (see the attachment: ""Simulation curriculum model.pdf"");- institutional internationalization will be stimulated by organizing different meetings and dissemination events, where the achieved results will be disseminated and shared;- the academic and training exchanges between the Baltic Sea region and the South-Eastern area of Europe will be very much stimulated, contributing for harmonization of the training practices, connecting the training facilities in a common network to be jointly valued by the partners;- new research methods and research areas of knowledge will be identify, where the simulators to be involved and valued on competitive basis, within the agreed partnership;- the partners will exchange expertise in designing virtual environment and simulation scenarios for navigation and engine room onboard the ships, on simulators, using the partners software and hardware.<< Implementation >>In the relation with the specified intellectual outputs, various activities will be conducted among the partners:- curriculum development and harmonization according to IMO STCW rules and regulations, - innovative training programs will be implemented on sustainable basis, based on modern teaching methods by simulation and further good practices will be exchanged;- updated training and learning material development will be available for a large pool of students/teachers, implementing a joint virtual campus,- exchanges activities will be organized stimulating the internationalization across the EU,- research activities will be conducted.Overall 5 common face-to-face courses will be organized by each partner alternatively in each country, using and valuing the simulating facilities of the partners in area of navigation, marine engineering, logistics or research. The virtual campus will generate a larger participation of beneficiaries. Moreover, to disseminate the results and the project conclusions, 5 conferences will be organized, to achieve a larger impact in soundness and to attract stakeholder and potential beneficiaries into the network. The courses and the conference will be financed from the budget, in accordance with the participant number, distances and days of attendance, in compliance with Erasmus+ financial rules.Along with MARS-NET project implementation, the partners' representatives have scheduled 5 project meetings, one per each quarter of project implementation.<< Results >>The project is mainly focused on building an efficient and effective educational network among a large pool of partners, with regional soundness, to value the simulation facilities for adopting innovative teaching and learning practices, as a definitive step toward the digitization of maritime higher education system. Subsequently, other objectives are aimed as to get competitive advantages from the good practices exchange and knowledge sharing within the network, in regard of improving the teaching skills and simulation learning methods, in respect of an updated alignment to the new tendencies in education and training processes around the European Union, providing a solid support forexcellence in teaching and skills development processes. In this respect, the partners will conduct specific activities to produce 5 wider intellectual outputs, defined under a quantitative perspective (i.e. work days for manpower on categories of personnel), as following:- O1: “Building the updated pool of competencies for maritime education to improve the value of simulating facilities in maritime education”: 10 course syllabuses will be harmonized to value the simulation learning methods on hard and soft skills requirements, in order to align the MET curriculum to the newest STCW standards for preparing a virtual exchange program for students and teachers;- O2: “Digital media tools to enhance the simulating teaching efficiency in maritime education” – the guidance framework will be issued, together with the summary design of most 5 relevant courses in which simulation facilities and majorly used, further selected for a “digital” detailed preparation;- O3: “Virtual digital campus for teachers, researchers and students” – a virtual network developed as a “virtual campus” will be developed for sharing the didactic materials and the digital resources, for simulating learning environment courses and classes (www.marplat.eu);- O4: “Joint scientific research partnership for building a more efficient and effective teaching and learning environment based on simulation facilities” – technical solutions for integrating the simulator within an operational network will be identified, where the students can freely access the training resources, even from onboard the ships;- O5: “Virtual webinars tools to enhance the digitization of learning materials in Maritime Higher Education” - an overall number of 250 students and 20 teachers will be virtually enrolled in digital classes, to support the developing of the digital content materials. The methodology of building the teaching materials drafted on O2 will be fulfilled, recording the online monitored web-seminars sessions, delivered in video-conference system, to the students from cadetship or from different campuses. As result of O5, the partners will make available 5 digital courses, fully covered with harmonized curriculum (O1), teaching materials (O2) and online available resources (O3), providing the hard skills for maritime providing the hard skills for maritime higher education students, in virtual manner to stimulate the cadetship dual system programs, the virtual mobility of international students and the digitization of simulating classes. Beside the intellectual outputs, 5 common face-to-face courses will be organized by each partner alternatively in each country, for a total of 30 students and 30 teachers, using and valuing the simulating facilities of the partners in area of navigation, marine engineering, logistics or research. The virtual campus will generate a larger participation of beneficiaries. To disseminate the results and the project conclusions, 5 conferences will be organized, to achieve a larger impact in soundness and to attract stakeholder and potential beneficiaries into the network."

"The 2014 Communication ""Innovation in the Blue Economy” recognizes the lack of skilled workforce knowledgeable in the latest technologies and a range of other disciplines, as a challenge and hindering factor of blue economy. Alike, the New Skills Agenda for Europe confirms same status and suggests taking action for the improvement of the quality and relevance of training for obtaining the necessary skills. A challenge met across blue economy is the poor image of the activities among young and the lack of information in respect to career opportunities, which in combination with the ageing trend of European population may generate lack of qualified personnel.Maritime schools face several challenges in preparing students to meet workplace demands in an increasingly complex, knowledge and technology-based environment while lacking generic skills that are requested by employers, such as critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication and teamwork. In this context iSOL-MET aims to:-Bridge the gap between shipping world requirements in respect to human resources soft skills and competences, through developing innovative educational material based on the case study methodology-Bridge the needs of maritime professionals for ongoing career opportunities even after completing their sea service on board-Bridge the experience gap of maritime universities’ students in respect to the on-board operations and the shipping practices.-Exchange best practices and cultural awareness on maritime education and shipping issues.Project addresses the needs of the students for obtaining the required skills for entering the shipping market and provides to educators new educational tools. Furthermore, addresses the needs of the shipping industry for qualified personnel.To achieve the aforementioned objective iSOL-MET will produce:1.Maritime skills courses for multidisciplinary and multicultural groups of students: a comprehensive course program that will integrate International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) model course guidelines, practice-oriented, to link theory and practice through using maritime case studies, for cultivating specific soft skills2.Maritime Case Study Handbook: a collection of all case studies identified and analyzed during project’ life time. Case studies will be identified in close collaboration with the industry and will constitute an integrated educational material, designed to address current soft skills gaps, while providing to the educators with useful material in respect to the content and the teaching methods3.Guidelines for the development of soft skills educational material: a practical set of recommendations to course designers in developing, conducting and evaluating a course focusing on soft skills using cases studies.4.Soft skills evaluation tools: a set of tools that an educator or a manager can use for evaluating the soft skills competences of students or employees. The aim is the creation of an Assessment Center for systematizing the process of soft skills evaluation, through case studies.. Assessment Center will link the academia with the business world since, the case studies developed in combination with designed assessment tools could be used in the shipping industry for assessing the competences of existing employees or for recruitment reasons. Through iSOL-MET is expected to:•Enhance the quality and relevance of the learning offer in maritime education through developing innovative educational material, using the case study methodology •Help students recognize and adopt ""growth"" mindset, meaning that their capacities are expandable. Students' mindset shifting is expected to affect their performance and motivation. •Develop competency and knowledge sharing, through mobilizing the maritime skills across participating countries.•Meet the demand of highly skilled maritime professionals and enhancing youth employment possibilities•Improve the attractiveness of the maritime profession and remedying to the observed lack of articulated educational proposition for sea-related activities, by adapting the courses content to the new maritime environment and emerging trends of the industry•Bundle forces from intergovernmental organizations, research institutes and the shipping industry to provide innovative skills for marine business•Promote and support networks connecting education and training organisations in EU level and encourage opportunities of cluster academia cooperation.•Change the professors’ mentality about teaching techniques helping them to improve their effectiveness and the quality of their teaching method."

"MENTORESS is a project which aims to increase the awareness of women in maritime, esp. seafarer women, to develop their situation in maritime, to give them the place they deserve in the sector and to furnish them with skills to cope with the problems they face. The objective of this project is to develop, test and implement an identical 1- semester extracurricular programme to give necessary leadership and intercultural communication skills to female cadets. With an eye to do this, it intends to design a syllabus and to import it to the Leadership and Management curriculum of maritime faculties to help prospective female staff cope with the hardships they are likely to encounter in seagoing services and maritime jobs and to make them realize themselves to the full extent. It also aims to increase the number of women in maritime jobs and, by this way, to raise awareness for the presence of women on-board the ships, to create a women-friendly atmosphere which requires elaborate behaviours and language, to encourage appropriate behaviour among personnel and to foster good camaraderie. It will also provide the participants with awareness and cultural considerations with regard to gender.The project which was carried out by four partner countries, which are Turkey, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania, addressed all the stakeholders in the maritime sector, including students and instructors from not only maritime schools but also from other higher education institutions including naval academies, representatives from shipping companies, maritime & port authorities, maritime industry or naval defense system and profit and non-profit organizations in the sector. It addressed a total of more than 3000 people.There took place 4 multiplier events in the project. Each included a workshop related to the main theme of the event. In addition to the multiplier events, the project had four Learning/Teaching/ Training Activities which were in parallel with the main theme of the preceding multiplier event. They were planned as 2 intensive study programmes and 2 joint staff training sessions. They brought added value to the main objective - the educational network - by providing the opportunity to test and evaluate the developed ""Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions"" common syllabus. All intellectual outputs, multiplier events, intensive study programmes and short-term joint staff training events in the scope of the project were realized successfully. A Charter which consisted of the papers prepared within the frame of the project was prepared. The papers in the Charter analyzed multi-dimensional aspects of women integration in the maritime professions. The charter revealed measures needed to bridge the gender gap in order to ease the access of female officers and managers onto the maritime labour market and naval defence occupations.Apart from the Charter, the partners developed the ""Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions"" common syllabus which was based on the educational requirements extracted from the survey. The educational management of the syllabus – prerequisites, learning objectives, overall workload (lectures, seminars, projects, individual study), assessment of learning outcomes and references were jointly agreed upon.Last but not least of the results is MENTORESS virtual network, which is hosted by MARPLAT, a product of another European funded project. It has established an efficient media for communication within the partners and for the dissemination of the project’s results. It has also included the educational references for the syllabus designed. Moreover, the virtual network allows on-line course for Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions. The project has impacts on participants, participating organizations, target groups and stakeholders at local, regional, national and international levels. The first impact is increasing diversity awareness and awareness about the women in the maritime professions. The impact has already been stated positively by relevant stakeholders who attended the activities and reported that they had effectively benefited from them.The Project is foreseen to have a great impact on the equal chance for women to be employed in the sector. On the completion of the project and after making the outcome available to all the parties concerned, more women are expected to be encouraged to take part in the maritime sector and they will have the necessary intellectual background to cope with the problems they are likely to encounter. This will help the number of women in the maritime increase in time, and all maritime sector will benefit from the increase in the workforce, for they will have the chance to select the most suitable candidates for the vacant positions. This will eventually give way to an increase in the welfare of society."

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.

Maritime shipping industry is one of the most dynamic economic sectors throughout Europe due to the constant changes of its development needs. It is also closely linked to the changes in Marine Sciences and IT Technologies. Consequently, education and training in marine sciences 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. Project MINE-EMI is focused at elaboration of Joint Master Program (JMPs) that facilitate developing skills and competences to raise awareness on emerging maritime issues in the wider Black Sea Basin in order to promote sustainable management of the maritime sector in the Black Sea basin. It involves representatives from the business sector and local administrations in order to fill the gap between the requirements in the maritime sector (management, transport operations, logistic) and the current lacking offer of updated courses in that matter. In the longer term, the objective is to establish a “Black Sea Community of MET (Maritime Education and Training) Institutions ” to contribute for boosting sustainable European maritime economy, Blue Growth, and Integrated Maritime Policy implementation by providing modern and adequate E&T.In line with the main objectives of the EU Integrated Maritime Policy - more coherent approach to maritime issues, with increased coordination between different policy areas - the project contributes to achieving efficient, safe, secure and environmentally shipping and logistic operations and the overall efficiency of tackling the maritime issues, through:- promotion of the quality of education and training in the MET sector to address the specific maritime challenges and prepare the future managers and experts applying innovative methods, practical oriented approach and e-learning model;- Facilitation the European mobility for students and teachers, involving educational and training institutions that wish to contribute to overcoming these challenges, in line with the “Maritime Erasmus” concept;- Cooperation between European MET organizations and industry in the field of education and training for managing the issues in maritime sector for upgrading competences and adapting to the requirements of the maritime industry.PARTNERS: 1 Piri Reis University - Lead Partner, PRU2 Constanta Maritime University, CMU3 Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy, NVNA4 University of the Aegean, UAEGEAN5 Marine Cluster Bulgaria, MCB6 Municipality of Piraeus, MP7 Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, CPMRAll the partners have a consolidate experience based on its scientific/ academic and professional background, direct management of maritime scientific and vocational education and close links with stakeholders. The HEIs have been previously involved in similar projects and have experience not only to lead the IOs development, but to contribute best to the internationalization of the work.The project implementation is based on the progressive model, including preparatory activities, development, testing and finalization of JMPs. The preparatory activities consist of a need analysis involving industrial and governmental stakeholders in order to design a syllabus that corresponds to the contemporary needs and requirements and specific case studies at European level to identify, select and analyze accordingly the specific subject areas of maritime issues.In the development phase, educational material will be elaborated, collected, evaluated and selected, satisfying the criteria set by the stakeholders. While PRU, NVNA and UAEGEAN will work on theoretical part of the teaching materials, CMU will mainly work on practical side, creating scenarios for maritime simulators on the specific topics of the subject. The both parts will be developed on coordinated way in order to synchronize all the elements. A unified assessment system will be set up and implemented.PRU will led the integration of the developed modules in the JMPs. The lead partner will develop JMPs course catalogue together with the partner's HEIs for better adaptation to institutions specificities and to offer the courses outside the partnership framework.The produced material will be tested and evaluated during the mobility events. For the evaluation of the content, the teaching style, predefined assessment methods will be used, so to get measurable and comparable results. The feedback received will be then used to finalize the courses. The project derives from the experiences and needs of the participating institutions to raise awareness on emerging maritime issues. The beneficiaries of the project will be equipped with innovative tools for MET in master degree higher education that can be directly exploited and applied to the every-day life of the HEIs in practical, concrete level.The novelty of the project is determined by the innovative multi-dimensional approach, depending on objectives.