Digital education in maritime: A practical study based on gamification for port equipment training

This study is aimed to investigate digital education, gamification, digital education in maritime and to measure whether there is a significant difference between the factors of gender, experience, age, education level in crane equipment simulator training. In order to conduct these measurements, a survey was conducted encompassing crane operators possessing a minimum of eight years of professional experience within the industry, who had undergone training in crane equipment simulation and were categorized into various educational and age groups, as well as trainees without professional industry experience, who had received training in crane equipment simulation and were categorized into diverse educational and age groups. Statistical analysis involving the Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test was employed to discern the presence of significant differences among the dataset. As a result of the conducted analyses, it was found that simulator training received positive evaluations across the aforementioned factor groups. However, a noteworthy distinction was observed in terms of participation motivation between female and male participants (p=0.033<0.05), with women demonstrating a higher level of participation motivation (4.7857) in comparison to men (4.3269). Based on the outcomes of this study, it is plausible to suggest the promotion of simulator utilization within maritime education.