During the practical sessions, students are responsible for: 

1. building their own mini RAS 
2. managing the system and maintaining the water quality parameters 
3. taking care of live fish in the tanks of each RAS

The practical is quite extensive since it includes taking care of live animals. Students in groups manage the tanks, feed the fish, take care of water quality, etc. for a duration of 5 weeks, 7 days per week. 

Due to corona restrictions, it was not possible for the students to do the practical session in the Aquatic Research Facility of Carus, the animal research facility of WUR (Carus-ARF). However, the application of the theoretical knowledge in practice is an important learning objective of the course - using such knowledge to evaluate the daily management actions on the RAS water quality performance and fish welfare. Therefore, the course offers very important skills to students for future occupations in aquaculture sector where they have to manage few thousands of fish, but also for those that want to continue in research and perform experimental studies involving aquatic organisms. 

Mimicking real life in this course is therefore of great importance. Hence, the lecturers investigated ways to replace this practical session with something that approached that experience as close as possible.  

The first step would be to build the RAS. This step was replaced by a practical video with animated elements (see the second video), created by the educational video team. In this video, the different components and their functioning were explained, helping the students to understand how the RAS works. This would only cover the first practical morning of the course. For the practical, the normal setup was still the same as earlier years; there were 10 groups of students and each group was responsible for maintaining one RAS housing 30 common carps.  

For the majority of the 35-day lasting practical, another solution involving video was used; vlogging. This vlogging was done by a single student-assistant who was present at the RAS systems for 35 consecutive days. The process that is explained below was hence repeated 35 times (each student being 6 -7 days ‘responsible’ and trained under supervision (5 minutes feedback and 5 minutes vlogging per student each day).  

Every morning the student assistant would measure the water quality parameters in each of the 10 RAS and provide the data to each student group via an Excel file shared in OneDrive (one Excel sheet was allocated per group). Collected data (time series) were directly visualised in graphs to create optimal conditions for management actions and feedback on proposed management decisions of students. The students used the Excel file in which all data about the fish (number, daily feed ration etc), the water quality parameters (temperature, oxygen, pH, etc) and the approved management actions (temperature, pH, oxygen, etc) of the previous days were registered.  

Based on those data, the student groups had to make decisions for their consecutive actions and had to register those decisions in the Excel file. They would discuss their intended actions with the lecturers during a feedback or consultation session every day (7 days a week) and they would ask for advice if needed. During the consultation session, a single (rotating) representative of each group was present, and there was time for consultation for each group. They would propose their management decisions based on the water quality measurements and they could ask questions about the measurements, or about the next steps required. Note: if the decisions would be detrimental for the fish, the lecturers would interfere. Then, they would go to the vlogging student assistant; one group at the time.  

The vlogging student assistant had a cell phone attached to a gimble for a vlogging setup, see the video below what this vlogging looked like. He called the responsible student (5-10 minutes) and discussed the agreed actions accordingly. E.g. the students would indicate the amount of feed required to feed the fish, they would be able to check the filters in case cleaning was required, they could check the behaviour of the fish during feeding and the clarity of the water for instance, which were visible on the camera that was attached to the gimble. In that way, the student could follow what was done and see how the fish were responding. The student assistant also administered all taken actions in the Excel file, so that the students could discuss and take action on those things again the next day.  

Even though the student-assistant performed the actions, the students were ‘fully responsible’ for the well-being of their fish and their environment. That all groups also participated actively during the weekend sessions, showed that they were engaged. The feedback that the lecturers and student-assistant received on these practicals was very positive.