The Captain was a seafarer and captain for over thirty years, and during the 1990s was captain
of a ship-based university program called “Semester at Sea”.
The course allowed students to study on board while sailing around the world.
This unique educational program helped Capt. Nianias to link his extensive maritime knowledge
to computer-based multimedia education.

“The program had a tremendous impact on me”, remembers Capt. Nianias.
“Sailing around the world together with students and faculty provided me with a profound insight into the possible interactions between education, technology and the sea”.

After a chance meeting with the directors at infoWERK e-learning in Austria,
and seeing what the company was doing with computer-based multimedia training,
Captain Nianias recognized that this new type of teaching could be applied to training seafarers.
What followed was an almost two-year development program,
resulting in the Marine Educational Evaluations module and Coastal Skipper Sailing Course offered
by infoWERK. Other programs are in the development stage.

“Feedback from training instructors at nautical academies and institutes has been extremely positive.
These professional educators see the obvious value and need for this efficient and effective
new method of transferring knowledge” says Capt. Nianias.

The Marine Educational Evaluations module offers fourteen multimedia-based evaluations to review,
evaluate and test knowledge of some of the most important areas of marine safety and training.
The Coastal Skipper Sailing Course is designed to prepare the student for the theoretical exam
of the coastal skipper license. It is a state-of-the-art multimedia training program that includes animation,
narration, interactivities, visualizations, simulations and tests.

As Capt. Nianias knows from his days with Semester at Sea, personal interaction is also important.
The students can communicate with “e-tutors” who are able to edit the course structure and add content,
create reports and track student’s learning progress. They can easily maintain contact with their students.

“The e-tutors provide a valuable part of the multimedia learning process”, continues Capt. Nianias.
“Our program is not designed to replace the instructor – on the contrary, this program offers him
or her a powerful educational tool that can enhance and enrich the learning experience”

Courses are currently being offered in both English and German, with capability for translation
into other languages.