YCYW's classrooms extend beyond traditional settings. The classroom can be a laboratory of an international research organisation, a hospital, the summit of Huangshan Mountain, or the Gobi Desert.

This time, our students visited Dishui Lake, a landmark of the Lin-gang Special Area in Shanghai.

In early November, 27 YCYW students embarked on their first exploration of this circular, man-made lake near the East China Sea. They sailed Dishu Lake, and explored its depths by operating unmanned, remotely operated vehicles (ROV) to collect samples and data for testing its water quality.

For the second consecutive year, YCYW's EdFutures Division and the Rainbowfish-HADALX Deep-sea Exploration Base collaborated on the three-day Advanced Marine Science and Engineering Camp. This project has guided students out of the classroom and into the realm of the application of knowledge.

Dr Christopher Hurley, the project leader and the Head of the EdFutures Division, believes that enabling students to gain access to real-world learning involves much more than merely enhancing their university applications. By engaging in such practical activities, the students can feel a real connection to the world, and develop their own ideas about a better future for humanity.

"Global issues concern all of humanity. What we are really passionate about is engaging our students to work through real issues in real world scenarios, to contribute to research, and to develop new ideas and new solutions," he said.

Rafi, a Year 11 student at YCIS Shanghai, initially did not know much about about pollution, except for greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. During the three days, he and his teammates studied marine ecology and exploration with experts, including marine environmentalists from Shanghai Maritime University, and used artificial intelligence to analyse the data collected by the ROVs. Although the data showed low total dissolved solids (TDS) values in the lake's water and no signs of industrial pollution or residual chlorine, the detection of heavy metal elements raised concerns.

In their report summarising the results of their experiments, Rafi and his teammates wrote, 

"From our understanding of these numerous challenges, we believe that plastic pollution is the most complicated and biggest impact on marine life because it can cause significant extinction of some underwater species, and we want to take immediate actions to deal with this issue."

In the second half of the report, the students cited the research methodology of University of Michigan researchers who have used satellite systems to track the concentration of microplastics in the oceans.

The students from YWIES Beijing Yizhuang sampled different areas of Dishui Lake and found that the trophic level index (TLI) was high in certain locations. Mr Well Fu, the Chinese Coordinator at YWIES Beijing Yizhuang and the YCYW Cross-school Curriculum Coordinator, observed the entire process of how the students reached their conclusions.

He said, "During the process, I saw that the students were able to summarise the reasons for their failures, but they were not discouraged. They debugged the ROV machine repeatedly, and deployed it into the water time and again. Each time they watched the body of the machine dive smoothly into the water, they shouted in excitement. Through this process, I believe that they further developed their teamwork skills and their dedication to scientific research."

Mr Hubert Hu, an educational technology expert at the EdFutures Division, believes that learning in real situations can help students develop new perspectives on learning.

"In the classroom, students typically read books or use data obtained by others, but such data doesn't motivate them to learn. Even though the data was not very complicated, this time, the students worked with data that they had collected by themselves. I believe this will have a great impact on them, both in terms of interest and motivation to learn," he said.