27 February, 2019 – Marine Learning Systems, a provider of maritime training and assessment software solutions, has partnered with Carnival Corporation & plc, the world’s largest leisure travel company, to develop an innovative application for mariner skills assessment.
The application, named SkillGrader, was designed to help standardize Carnival Corporation’s training and assessment across the company’s fleet of 105 ships and 9 brands. Prior to its development, there were numerous different approaches to training, with hundreds of programs, and a variety of fleet trainers and external training providers.
“We wanted to align and standardize our approach.” says John Allen, Carnival Corporation’s Director of Maritime Professional Development. “No matter which ship you’re on, no matter which brand you’re on, the ships will all be equally as safe as each other. And they will be the safest ships you can sail on.”
As part of this initiative, Carnival Corporation designed a performance-related training approach where crew were to be placed within targeted training programs based on their assessment results, rather than assuming no prior knowledge and enrolling crew into every course. This required developing a new technical system that could support consistent assessment of any officer, while on-board any ship.
SkillGrader enables these efforts with a tablet-based application that allows any trainer or supervisor to objectively and reliably assess employees. The application uses a binary grading scheme to reduce human bias that can lead to variation. After the assessment, SkillGrader automatically analyzes the data collected and delivers a comprehensive report on individual and team performance. They system also collates all submitted data to give reports that allow for analysis and comparison of skills across multiple departments, vessels and the entire organization.
According to Murray Goldberg, CEO of Marine Learning Systems, “although technology has played a big role in improving and advancing the art of maritime training, skills assessment has remained largely the same. There is typically an expert assessor observing the skill, making notes and providing feedback. This leaves much to the discretion of the assessor. And while you can get great outcomes from this way of assessing, you can also get very poor outcomes. You need consistency, objectivity and standardization in the process. SkillGrader helps provide the reliability that has been missing from skills assessment and gives operators new insight into crew competency.”
About Carnival
Carnival Corporation & plc is the world’s largest leisure travel company and among the most profitable and financially strong in the cruise and vacation industries, with a portfolio of nine of the world’s leading cruise lines. With operations in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises (Australia), Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Cunard.
Together, the corporation’s cruise lines operate 105 ships with 242,000 lower berths visiting over 700 ports around the world, with 20 new ships scheduled to be delivered through 2025. Carnival Corporation & plc also operates Holland America Princess Alaska Tours, the leading tour company in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Traded on both the New York and London Stock Exchanges, Carnival Corporation & plc is the only group in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices.
With a long history of innovation and providing guests with extraordinary vacation experiences, Carnival Corporation has received thousands of industry awards – including recognition by the Consumer Technology Association™ as a CES® 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree for OceanMedallion™. A revolutionary wearable device that contains a proprietary blend of communication technologies, OceanMedallion enables the world’s first interactive guest experience platform transforming vacation travel on a large scale into a highly personalized level of customized service. The prestigious CES Innovation Awards honor outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products.
About Marine Learning Systems
Marine Learning Systems is an eLearning software and services provider to the maritime industry. Its main product, MarineLMS, was crafted specifically for the maritime training environment to deliver, support and provide metrics on the training initiatives of vessel operators and other maritime training providers. MarineLMS is an enterprise product which operates with or without internet connectivity and inherently understands maritime concepts such as vessels and routes to deliver targeted position- vessel- and equipment-specific training and assessment. Marine Learning Systems provides a full complement of services and consultation to support you from idea, all the way through to ongoing operations and maintenance.
Press Contact:
Peter Frankel
Marine Learning Systems
peter[@]marinels.com
+1(885) 362-7463