Association of Maritime Education & Training Institutions in Asia Pacific

Pro-forma

Kindly provide brief comment on the following: Compliance with course objective: Does the course provide the knowledge and skill requirements for watchstanding officers operating a GMDSS radio station? . Teaching materials: a) manual The instructor manual contains a good course plan and a wealth of essential information for instructors of GMDSS GOC course. It is a systematic guidance to instructors on teaching all aspects of GMDSS and satellite communications. To facilitate instructors teaching better, more photographs /drawings on transparencies should be inserted to supplement the textual teaching materials. However, without the student text for reference, my comment would become limited to the usefulness of the instructor manual. I believe that the student text could be designed to complement the instructors teaching material. b) software Some technical problems were encountered. (1) In running the GMDSS demo simulator: - LES file not active error (D:\GMDSS\LESDATA.CFG); - NetRadio not working error; This error is due to wrong PATHS used in the c:\Gmdss\GmdssSetup.ini. It is rectified by replacing D: with C: in the [Paths] section of the GmdssSetup.ini file. - In addition, the sound system does not work and the network panel returns a message bad audio status. It may be because the program requires AWExx sound card to operate the sound system but the sound card of my PC is not the required type. (2) In viewing PTS programs: All PTS programs return "access violation" error when the programs are closed. Although the error message is annoying, it does not prevent users from starting and running the programs. General opinions on the GMDSS simulation program: As I have never used GMDSS radio station of Ship Analytics, I cannot comment on how good the simulation program resembles real radio equipment of Ship Analytics in operation. Probably, due to installation problems, I could not successfully use the program to simulate transmission and reception of telex between demo instructor and demo student. In spite of the simulation problem, the well-designed user interface of the simulation program can familiarize students with the necessary operational procedures and commands for GMDSS radio equipment. I trust that the full version simulation program can enable students to acquire the necessary operational knowledge as it can run in several networked computers to simulate real communication situations. General opinions on the Inmarsat and PTS programs:

The content presented by the programs is text-based with the aids of some static graphics/photos. The computer programs can be improved by incorporating modern presentation skills and software, such as interactive treatment of multimedia. General opinions on the propagation prediction program: It is an interesting and powerful program. Personally, I feel that it is over-complicated in general for a ship officer to understand the underlying principles of using the propagation prediction program. Assessment: The practical assessment and evaluation is well designed. All necessary knowledge of using GMDSS radio equipment is included in the assessment. The criteria of assessment and learning objectives are clearly stated and well-defined. I believe that the assessment can truly evaluate students knowledge and performance. General Comment and Proposals for Further Development: Please provide any further comment on an additional page. ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................ ............................................................................................................................................................