Quality standards implementation in maritime education and training institutions: fuzzy assessment

Abstract

Efficient organization of maritime industry is based on adequate human resources. Knowledge and skills are the results of a well organized study process and training. Since education is part of the public administration, the European Quality Management tool for the Public Sector - Common Assessment Framework (CAF) could be used, in accordance with the STCW convention requirements as a starting point to develop a model that allows quantitative assessment of the Maritime Education and Training (MET) institutions. Evaluation results and procedures are usually described qualitatively as verbal assessments that are part of a report or are summarized in statistical reports. Fuzzy reasoning permits a transition from qualitative to quantitative decision making. For this purpose, we suggest fuzzy modelling, which gives a quantitative assessment of education effectiveness. Evaluators’ verbal assessments could be linguistic input variables of a fuzzy decision model, based on CAF recommendations and STCW convention that produces a quantitative mark of the Maritime Education and Training Institution quality.

Keywords

• MET institutions
• quality
• assessment
• fuzzy assessment
• CAF 2006