Development Of Multimedia Courseware For "Cargo Transportation At Sea" And Teaching Research On Related Course

Transportation is about the movement of people, goods and services to a variety of destinations using a variety of methods and routes. There include five transportation modes of air transportation, road transportation, pipeline transportation, sea transportation and rail transportation. About three-quarter of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans and over 90% of the world's trade is carried by sea. Therefore, to reduce world trade transporting cost and increase transporting amount of world trade, it is needed to improve sea transportation, especially the. quality and technique of sea transportation and improvement of sea transportation environment. And among these important factors, the most important one is upgrading maritime education and training quality i.e. upgrading individual skill of crew and other related personals.Myanmar is a developing country and has a coastline of 2,230 km, and is a resource-rich country with a strong agricultural base. In recent years, Myanmar shipping industry is expanding by leaps and bounds and the amount of Myanmar seafarers on international shipping lines has reached the important position in international shipping industry. Myanmar higher level maritime education already has been listed as the project needing to give priority to develop by the country. Myanmar Maritime University (MMU) is a higher level maritime university newly established in 2002 under these circumstances. She will bear up the heavy responsibility of the country's large amount of highly skilled seafarers training.Cargo transportation at sea is one of the important subjects for the nautical science students of any maritime university or college. It is the application subject that base on the engineering mechanic and ship theory, study about the stowage and prestowage for several types of vessels, loading, discharging, transportation management and delivery etc. that will encounter in the sea transporting process. There includes large mount of safe practice for cargo at sea, basic concept of optimal and economy transportation, basic theories and principles. It is the subject that the qualified crew onboard the several types of cargo vessels must need to grasp.Using simulator-based training course and using multimedia teaching technique in classroom are more and more popular in international maritime industry. It is a great revolution of improving traditional classroom teaching method of using chalkboard, has for generations been an effective method for teaching theory, making the teacher instruction effectiveness, favoring the teacher in integrating theory with practice. On the other hand, the student information acceptance amounts in a unit class hour are more and the student understanding on his subject field can be improved by using multimedia courseware.This dissertation mainly describes about developing multimedia courseware for the course "Cargo Transportation at Sea" and comprehensive research on the related course and its results. The courseware was developed under the guidance of my supervisor Prof. Wenchang Qiu. The main purpose of developing this courseware is to use in the nautical science classrooms of SMU (Shanghai Maritime University) and MMU (Myanmar Maritime University) for "Cargo Transportation at Sea" course. The courseware was accomplished based on the Chinese version courseware"海上货物运输"originally created by my supervisor. In the courseware, it has been fully revised with the contents that will fit to Myanmar shipping rules, regulations, characteristics and future development needs. After making preliminary study on the educational psychology and higher level education, in the courseware designing some principles of these two fields were applied in the developed courseware. Myanmar is a developing country, especially in the aspect of computer hardware, software and modern maritime education, the developing rate is slower, regard on this as for the author who would be a teacher of newly established Myanmar Maritime University, grasping the educational courseware developing technique, understanding on the educational psychology and basic principles of higher level education would be extremely important.In developing this courseware, the author mainly used Authoware multimedia creating software, the product of Macromedia Company USA, and also used Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash and VC++ etc as supplementary. This kind of courseware although very more difficult in developing than Powerpoint creation, but provide with fast and easy environment for creating interactive applications and very powerful, especially it has the characteristic of the ability to realize direct embedding of several graphic software and DVD playback. As the thesis research result, the created courseware has 50,000 characters, more than 600 rare photographs and many animations, and at the end of each chapter, there include content summary and comprehensive questions and examples.To adapt with the requirements of the related under graduate students and self study for the other learner with different basic knowledge, in the courseware developing the specified basic starting knowledge level is relatively lower, in content arrangement it was paid attention to go from the easy to the difficult and complicated, to formulate clear and easy to understand. And some contents such as traditional formulae and their derivations which are relatively deeper and complicated in theory but not so practical worth are excluded in large range. The latest edition information, data and publications of variety of conventions, rules, regulations and criteria from international and national are applied in the courseware and the newest developed technologies in this subject field are also introduced. The courseware gave prominence to the transportation of some types of specialized vessel which have eliminated the freight volume of break bulk general cargo, especially to comprehensively reflect unit load containerized systems that are now used in the majority of cargo shipping. The break bulk general cargo transportation was presented only with a chapter after reducing some contents. As for the two chapters of the dangerous cargo transportation and container transportation, the larger space was given and enriched the contents. And the freight accidents and analyzing the causes of accident on transportation of frequently found cargos were added as extra in the contents of relating chapter and section.With respect to the science and technology advancement and development of international shipping industry, for the seafarers and ship and transportation management personal, not only need to integrate well the basic principles and professional knowledge but also need to have practical experience and effective business manage ability. In STCW 78/95 of IMO, it has been brought forward higher requirements to the officer level seafarers in the field of the operational ability and quality, and emphasize on the requirement of the seaman on technology skill and the ability to achieve eligible. This makes us to continuously regulate the course structure, renew contents, improve teaching means, make student by studying this course to establish and integrate the basic principle in the field of ship freight transportation and to grasp practical ship freight transportation technology. For this purpose, it is needed to make the course and instruction the required regulations to improve the quality and the operational ability of the students.So in developing this courseware, the author also try to satisfy all round requirements of International Marine Organization (IMO), International Maritime Lecturers Association, international professional organization of marine educators and trainers and the STCW guidelines under the guidance of the supervisor.Finally, in order to improve student achievement and the instructor' information delivery ability, the author edited English version courseware complement teaching materials for the students, chapter one to three can be seen in the thesis appendix.