The Half of a Seafarer's Training Your Course Evaluation Never Sees
A maritime cadet's competence is forged as much at sea as in the lecture theatre, yet most maritime education programmes evaluate only the campus half. Under the STCW competence regime and EU Directive 2022/993, the unmeasured sea phase is a genuine assurance gap.
Koji Education Team
Product · August 14, 2026
Bottom line: A seafarer's competence is forged as much at sea — during approved sea-going service and structured onboard training logged in a training record book — as in the lecture theatre ashore. Yet the typical maritime education and training (MET) programme evaluates only the campus half with an end-of-module satisfaction survey, and never systematically asks cadets about the berth, the shipboard training officer, or the quality of supervision on the water. Under the STCW competence regime, that is a blind spot over precisely the environment that decides fitness to sail.
Two halves, one certificate
The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW), adopted by the IMO on 7 July 1978 and in force since 28 April 1984, was rebuilt around competence in its 1995 revision and again in the 2010 Manila Amendments (adopted 21-25 June 2010, in force 1 January 2012). The Manila Amendments tightened the competence tables and added training in leadership and teamwork, ECDIS and marine-environment awareness, while strengthening the evaluation of onboard training and certification against fraud.
Within the EU, Directive (EU) 2022/993 of 8 June 2022 on the minimum level of training of seafarers gives STCW legal teeth, and tasks the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) with inspecting training systems in third countries and visiting Member States to verify compliance. Both regimes share a structural feature that campus course evaluation ignores: a cadet's certificate rests on approved sea-going service and structured onboard training — documented in a training record book and signed off by a shipboard training officer — not only on modules passed ashore.
So the programme has two halves. One is the classroom: navigation theory, stability, marine engineering, taught and examined on campus. The other is the ship: watchkeeping under supervision, drills, the messroom hierarchy, the quality of mentoring on a real bridge or in a real engine room. Standard student-evaluation-of-teaching instruments were built for the first half. They are absent from the second.
What the satisfaction survey misses
Ask a maritime academy how it evaluates teaching and you will usually hear about end-of-semester questionnaires on lecturers and facilities. Ask how it evaluates the sea phase — arguably the higher-stakes half — and the answer is often a training record book (which certifies tasks completed, not supervision quality) and informal debriefs. The result: the environment where a cadet learns whether they can actually stand a watch is the one the institution has the least systematic feedback on.
This matters for three reasons specific to the sector. First, berths vary enormously: a cadet on a well-run training vessel with a committed training officer has a different education from one parked on a short-staffed ship where "training" means unsupervised chipping and painting. Second, safety and welfare signals — fatigue, bullying, unsafe practice, isolation — surface first in how cadets describe life aboard, and a Likert mean on "the module met my expectations" will never catch them. Third, STCW and Directive (EU) 2022/993 make the quality of onboard training an accountable part of certification, so an academy that cannot evidence how it monitors and improves the sea phase has a genuine assurance gap, not merely a customer-experience one. This is the same placement blind spot we have traced in nursing and midwifery and allied-health programmes — the classroom over-measured, the practice half unheard.
Where Koji fits
Koji does not replace the training record book or the examiner; it closes the feedback gap over the half of the programme that paper certification cannot describe. Because Koji runs AI-moderated conversational interviews rather than a static form, a cadet returning from sea can be asked to describe the berth — the supervision they received, whether drills were real or performative, how safe they felt raising a concern — and be probed for specifics when they say "the training officer was good" or "it was a difficult ship." Its six structured question types (open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking, yes_no) let an academy combine a comparable scale item across berths with the open narrative that explains it, and its automatic thematic analysis surfaces recurring patterns — a particular operator, a particular route, a recurring welfare risk — across a whole cohort's sea phase without a human reading hundreds of debriefs.
Because the moderation is standardised and bias-aware, every cadet is asked in a consistent way regardless of which member of staff would otherwise have run the debrief, and formative, mid-placement collection means a problem berth can be caught during the sea phase rather than in a retrospective survey after the cadet is already certificated. Programme- and institution-level reporting lets a head of school see the sea phase as a managed, evidenced part of the curriculum rather than a black box. The same conversational interview engine underpins koji.so for teams doing wider stakeholder and workforce research.
But doesn't this just add another survey to overloaded cadets?
The strongest objection is workload: cadets and seafarers are among the most survey-fatigued populations in education, and adding an instrument risks compliance-clicking, not insight. Three honest responses. One, Koji's conversational format replaces several ad-hoc debriefs and forms with one adaptive interview, and adaptive questioning stops early when a cadet has little to add — it is designed to reduce, not multiply, touchpoints. Two, the point is not more data but data over the right half: most academies are over-measuring the classroom and under-measuring the ship, so rebalancing beats adding, much as a work-integrated learning programme has to evaluate the workplace, not only the seminar. Three — the limit worth stating plainly — feedback is not competence assessment. A cadet's account of their berth is evidence about the learning environment, not a substitute for the examiner's judgement of whether they can keep a safe watch. Koji surfaces and mitigates blind spots in how the sea phase is supervised and supported; it does not, and should not, certify anyone fit to sail. Used that way — to see the half you currently cannot — it strengthens the assurance case STCW and Directive (EU) 2022/993 increasingly expect.
Frequently asked questions
Does STCW require institutions to collect student feedback on the sea phase?
STCW and Directive (EU) 2022/993 require approved, monitored onboard training and structured evaluation of competence; they do not prescribe a satisfaction survey. But the obligation to monitor and continuously improve the quality of training makes systematic feedback on the sea phase the practical way to evidence that monitoring — especially the supervision and welfare conditions a training record book does not capture.
Isn't the training record book already the evaluation of the sea phase?
The training record book certifies that specified tasks were completed and signed off. It is a competence-tracking document, not a measure of how well the cadet was supervised, mentored or kept safe. Those are exactly the modifiable quality factors that vary most between berths and that feedback, not a task log, reveals.
How is this different from evaluating a normal work placement?
The sea phase shares features with any work-integrated placement, but the ship is an isolated, hierarchical, safety-critical workplace where raising concerns is harder and welfare risks are higher. That raises the stakes on capturing cadet voice well, and on doing it during the phase rather than after.
Can conversational feedback stay anonymous on a small cohort?
Small berths make re-identification a real risk. Koji's reporting aggregates and themes feedback rather than exposing individual transcripts, and mid-phase collection can be framed as environment monitoring. As with any small-n evaluation, the honest promise is confidentiality and careful aggregation, not absolute anonymity.
Does this replace the maritime examiner or the oral exam?
No. Competence to sail is certified by examination against STCW standards. Course evaluation is about the quality of the learning environment — teaching, supervision, support — on both halves of the programme. The two are complementary; neither substitutes for the other.
Ready to see the half of your maritime programme the satisfaction survey misses? Explore Koji for Education and put cadet voice at the centre of the sea phase.