Development and Lessons Learned of New Modular Ship Design Activities for Graduate Education During COVID

This paper describes changes that have been implemented to an obligatory MSc course on advanced ship design techniques at Delft University of Technology. These changes have been brought about due to three separate causes: 1) COVID and virtual learning, 2) the desire to introduce gamification into active teaching and learning of ship design, and 3) changing market needs. These three very different drivers meant that a new design activity had to be developed, which included a new case study, and new teaching methods incorporating both gamification and virtual learning. Two case studies will be discussed. First, a smaller case study will discuss the introduction of a new hybrid format (in-person and virtual participation) game designed to teach students modular design for offshore support vessels (OSVs). This hybrid game was developed by an MSc student and co-author, Laurentiu Lupoae, during an independent research assignment under the supervision of lead author Assistant Professor Austin Kana and ran during the original submarine design project for the fall of 2020. To support this game, a modular design Excel tool was developed and the details will be discussed in the paper. Second, after implementing lessons learned from the first case study, the course design project for the fall of 2021 was redeveloped to cover the design of a small fleet of modular offshore service vessels (OSVs) for offshore wind. The growth of the offshore wind market and industry push towards developing service vessels to support the energy transition, especially in North Sea, were some of the key reasons behind selecting this as a case study for the design project. The structure of the new design project and the bespoke educational design tools developed for the project will be discussed. Both developments were supported heavily by PhD researchers and MSc students working on either an independent research assignment or their MSc thesis. In this sense, both the development of these activities and the execution of them during the course were learning opportunities for the researchers and MSc students. The paper will conclude with lessons learned focused on improving graduate education for masters students studying ship design.