Purpose: Shipping courses contain much technical and specialist knowledge and present particular challenges for English medium instruction (EMI). This paper aims to investigate both student perceptions of the importance and satisfaction level of EMI in shipping courses in higher education in Taiwan and the perceptions of expert stakeholders through qualitative interviews.

Design/methodology/approach: Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is used to gather data on participants’ perceptions of what is (un)important and (un)satisfactory. Based on past studies, four dimensions with 20 items were developed and 121 effective questionnaires were collected. Further, qualitative interviews with expert stakeholders ( n = 9) are undertaken to gather data to contextualize and complement the quantitative student data.

Findings: Findings show students attributed high importance but low satisfaction to items such as course learning objectives and students’ English level, and low importance and high satisfaction to items such as electronic teaching platform and relevance of subject to practice. Factor analysis and cluster analysis were used to divide samples into three groups. Qualitative interview results confirm many of the quantitative findings but also show where some quantitative findings require more attention or investment when delivering EMI programmes.

Research limitations/implications: Questionnaire samples focus on university students. Other related field samples (e.g. EMI teachers, shipping teachers, English teachers, etc.) could be surveyed and compared in future studies. Qualitative interviews could also be expanded to other stakeholders such as government policymakers.

Practical implications: The findings of IPA in the shipping courses and the qualitative interviews can be used for both teaching design and implementation in related courses by university lecturers and other stakeholders (e.g. policy and decision-makers). Such approaches can enhance students’ learning motivation and teaching performance.

Social implications: This paper provides important guidance and diagnosis for how to introduce English teaching in shipping courses. Related courses can be further applied in higher education to popularize and promote EMI teaching in shipping and related fields.

Originality/value: EMI has seldom been studied in the context of shipping courses in the past. This paper adopts IPA method and qualitative interviews to complement previous studies and address gaps in recent research. It is expected that the research findings could be adapted and applied in other fields.