Analysing the effect of game-based learning for improving decision making processes in collision avoidance situations

Collision situations at sea are events that greatly threaten the durability of maritime transport and navigation safety. Officers of the watch who keep navigational watch on the ship's bridge are primarily responsible for preventing these collision accidents. Maritime officers who take the role of first and last measure in preventing conflict at sea, are also the main source of human errors that occur during this process. As a matter of fact, most of the collision accidents are directly related to the human errors and operations onboard the ship. Therefore, the employment of competent seafarers is still the most crucial element for reducing the human error and preventing maritime accidents. Quaility training programs are the most important step in training seafarers who are prepared for every situation with sufficient knowledge and skills. The aim of this study is to examine whether the performance of the officer candidate students can be improved with a decision-making exercise that is based on the game-based learning framework which contains collision prevention situations. In this context, a game-based decision-making exercise containing 8 different collision scenarios have been developed to help officer candidate students to identify perceptual cues, expectations, goals and actions more quickly and accurately in situations of collision prevention situations. The developed game-based training tool was tested by the officer candidate students and the effects were examined through a experimental model with pretest posttest control group. Analysis were carried out on collision prevention performance, which is formed from situational awareness, decision-making skills and navigational performance sub-factors. In addition, students' perspectives towards such game-based learning tools were questioned in particular to the developed training tool. The findings of the study showed that the game-based decision-making exercise developed for collision situations improves the collision prevention performance at a level that should not be ignored. It has been determined that game-based learning positively affects students' motivation, participation and perceived learning elements. The majority of the participants stated that they wanted to use this training tool again and that such game-based learning applications should become widespread for other courses and subjects.