After participating in Kongsberg Digital's Maritime Simulation Conference in Singapore, the attending educators return home with a profound understanding of maritime sector challenges. The conference highlighted how a well-functioning learning environment that integrates theory and practice prepares students to become key players in the global maritime sector.
Simulation forms the basis for versatile technological competencies necessary to meet the ever-changing challenges in the maritime industry. This teaching method translates students' theoretical knowledge into the required professional expertise by allowing them to experience practice in the simulator. Students bring interdisciplinary knowledge from their studies into the simulator, creating a bridge between subjects and between theory and practice. Educators can design targeted scenarios in the simulator that adapt to students' professional abilities.
Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering has used simulators in education since 1996. In 2024, the latest addition arrives — a new K-Sim® Engine Full Mission simulator, enabling students to experience methanol, electric, and LNG-powered ships. Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering is the first in the world to set up this new type of simulator, taking a crucial global role by being at the forefront and contributing to creating a sustainable future for the global maritime industry.
Kongsberg Digital's simulators represent the latest digital technology, allowing novice to expert-level training. Using virtual reality and detailed data processing, Kongsberg Digital creates realistic digital replicas of existing ships, providing a solid foundation for students' understanding of systems and processes on board ships.
The opportunity to practise is essential for acquiring new skills. Therefore, students at Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering have access to simulator models from their computer screens at home and school, where they can book and start training in the full mission engine room simulator on their own, outside of class. Even when students use the simulators individually, scenarios provide instant feedback on their skills. They can use the simulator as a virtual training community, gradually building a deeper understanding and improving their ability to apply their knowledge.
With the acquisition of the first K-Sim Engine Full Mission Simulator in 2015, realistic training in complex ship models became a reality. With the addition of a customised simulator for new sustainable fuel types and a hybrid model for sailing on methanol, Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering once again raises the bar for work on green transition in education, focusing on the role of the marine engineer as the future technical leader.
For several years, the Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering and the Singapore Maritime Academy (SMA) have collaborated on various projects and exchange programs, allowing students and educators to build cultural understanding and experience different teaching methods and practices. Before the start of Kongsberg Digital's Maritime Simulation Conference, we visited SMA, which has the most impressive simulator. It’s a full-size, three-story ship model that feels like a complete ship with all its equipment has been transported indoors. In the simulator scenarios, students can experience an authentic engine room, where they can physically operate valves on the tank top, the main engine, auxiliary machinery, and boilers. All of this is integrated with a K-Sim Engine simulator, allowing instructors to control the engine room from the control room in the Big View simulator. The international educational collaboration between Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering and SMA, both Kongsberg Digital customers, is a true success story, showing how two institutions from different parts of the world can work together and inspire each other to develop teaching methods and create new competencies to meet the challenges brought by the green transition and new fuel technologies.
Teaching in the K-Sim Engine Full Mission Simulator is largely relationship-based, and simulator scenarios incorporate playful elements to strengthen learning. The evaluation and examination process is intensive, and students' cognitive development progresses quickly. This teaching environment was precisely what Lars Thomsen, senior lecturer at Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering, presented in a presentation at Kongsberg Digital's Maritime Simulation Conference in Singapore.
Within the field of marine engineering, there is a deeply rooted professional culture where attention, risk sensitivity, and the pursuit of improvement serve as a foundation. These ideas must also be clarified in facilitating education. Marine engineers will, in many cases, work on facilities and systems with critical infrastructure where an essential element – in addition to personal mastery of the subject – is the marine engineer's social competence. This can be, for example, drilling platforms, power plants, hospitals, and ships, where stable operational reliability is achieved by employees being able to draw on shared cognitive professional expertise.
When students at Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering practice scenarios in simulators in small groups, they also practise teamwork. They incorporate their interpersonal and communicative skills into a behavioural structure that involves appropriate prioritisation and a collective analysis of the consequences of the alarms that arise. At the same time, students build a training community, support each other, and expand their professional language and interdisciplinary system understanding.
We organise exercises with demanding scenarios where students must act and where high adrenaline triggers “hot actions.” This means that students must make quick, intuitive decisions, forcing their tacit knowledge to the surface. Subsequently, we can repeat the same scenario and slow the course of events to so-called “cold actions.” This gives students time for reflection and a collective evaluation of action options, making the tacit knowledge they have built up during the marine engineering education conscious.
We educate our students to understand and shape the future technical challenges and opportunities, regardless of where they are in the world. Therefore, we are not only dedicated to promoting maritime education in Aarhus, Viborg, and through distance learning, but we also have our eyes on the whole world.
Our participation in Kongsberg Digital's Maritime Simulation Conference in Singapore gave us essential insights and strengthened Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering's international network. We have expanded our reach to exchange relevant research and knowledge in the maritime industry, from the port city of Antwerp to the impressive coastline of Vancouver.
This network is crucial at a time when technology is developing rapidly. It allows our educators to keep up with digital development and convey the latest knowledge to our students. With the investment in Kongsberg Digital's Maritime Simulator for sailing on methanol, we are at the forefront of developing a sustainable future for the global maritime industry. Our students are poised to become sought-after professionals in a greener workforce.
By: Anne-Mette Trebbien, PG Dip Master Mariner & Marine ChEng./Lecturer, Aarhus School of Marine and Technical Engineering
