09/14/2026
VDMC's Workforce Innovation team, led by Jessica M. Johnson Ph.D, Ed.S, recently stepped away from their usual roles and into the role of novice maritime trainees for a hands-on learning and performance day with their continued partners at Q.E.D. Systems, Inc.
The team had an opportunity to observe, ask questions, and better understand the skills, challenges, environments, and human demands behind maritime work.
Those experiences feed directly into the three interconnected areas of Workforce Innovation at VDMC:
K–12 Education & Career Exploration: For Jennifer Renne and Danielle Joyner, getting closer to the work provides firsthand context for the K–12 experiences they lead and develop. What should teachers know about the work behind the careers they are introducing? What could we translate into a hands-on activity, simulation, classroom resource, or career exploration experience? Those observations become fuel for new ideas, enhancements, and simulations developed by Devon Nelson, Paige Rainey, and Ashley Buczkowski, that help students and teachers experience maritime careers as more than a job title.
Industry Workforce & Training Innovation: For John Snell and Jason Dudley, the day provided another perspective on how skilled work is introduced, practiced, coached, and ultimately assessed. Their observations help inform how VDMC approaches industry training enhancements, simulation and assessment opportunities, and other regional workforce-development solutions.
Maritime Human Performance Science: For Jessica M. Johnson, Lawrence Obiuwevwi, and Jannah Elmousalami, these same experiences generate questions for applied multimodal human-performance research: What does complex skilled work demand from the mind and body? What changes as someone develops proficiency? What separates simply completing a task from performing it well? And how can eye tracking, physiological sensing, performance measures, and other multimodal data help us understand and model those differences?
Studying those questions in increasingly authentic contexts helps our research remain connected to the performance challenges experienced by the workforce itself.
K–12, industry innovation, and human-performance research are not separate lanes operating in isolation. A challenge observed in the workforce can inspire a research question. Research can provide evidence for better training and assessment. Understanding skilled performance can change how we introduce those skills and careers to students. And experiences with students, teachers, trainees, instructors, and skilled workers continually surface new questions for the team.
VDMC is especially grateful to QED Systems, Inc. for being a continued partner. Thank you for once again opening your doors, sharing your expertise, and investing your time in our team.
