MareLaw – Upgrading and harmonization of Maritime law STCW based curriculum for Maritime students, Agreement Number: 2022-1-HR01-KA220-HED-000090031, KA220-HED Cooperation partnerships in higher education project started on December 1, 2022 and finishes on November 30, 2024.
The main objective of the project is to improve and harmonise elements of the curriculum of the involved partner universities in the maritime field. It is important to state out that Maritime law courses taught at maritime HEIs are specific and different from those taught at law HEIs. Law students acquire various legal knowledge during their studies, especially civil and commercial law, so gaining knowledge of maritime law in their senior years is an upgrade of general knowledge acquired through their studies. On the other hand, maritime students acquire various interdisciplinary knowledge during their studies, and maritime law is usually the only course where students get acquainted with legal issues. Namely, students of maritime HEIs have no prior knowledge of the law, so they must master the basic legal concepts and the specificities of maritime legal issues in maritime law courses. Therefore, the maritime law course is more complex for students in maritime HEIs compared to students in law HEIs.
This project will harmonise the maritime law curricula in cooperation with several maritime universities in the EU by teachers with different educational and academic backgrounds. Maritime law courses are traditionally taught ex-cathedra using extensive literature and as such require the adaptation, since today’s students who are mostly digital-oriented are not that keen in using traditional literature. The transfer of teaching materials to the digital environment is one of the key prerequisites for bringing this complex matter closer to the students at maritime universities, which is directly linked to the priority of the Digital Europe Programme in the part Encouraging Digital Transformation of Educational Institutions. In this way, teaching materials will be more comprehensible and open and publicly available to everybody, including seafarers who are out of education and in remote locations.