A pilot test for the three suggested courses on Risk Management of Aquatic NNS has been carried out in Sarajevo at the Faculty of Science of UNISA from March 13-18 2022. Students and academic staff from UNISA, UNBI, AUT and UoM have participated to the Pilot test together with the staff of the programme Countries who have joined the pilot test (hibrid online and face to face) to evaluate the activities. The following selected topics of the 3 new courses were proposed as frontal lessons to the participant students:

1-Biological Characteristics of Invasive Invertebrate Species, Freshwater and Marine (Course 1)

2-General characteristics of aquatic organisms (Course 1)

3-“Economic impacts of invasive species” (Course 2)

4-“Introduction to Risk assessment tools AS-ISK” (Course 3)

5-“Introduction to Risk Assessment Tools – MaxEnt (Course 3)

Below some pictures of the activities in Sarajevo

Outcomes and experiences from the pilot testing were analyzed for further use and to provide suggestions/comments useful for the next academic years and to try to adapt the new courses to the Partner Countries Higher Education Institutions’ criteria. For this, during the frontal lessons made within the pilot test in UNISA Training evaluation and participants’ feedback forms were collected.

General Comments of Pilot Test Feedbacks

A total of 17-20 students attended the pilot test in Sarajevo University. By the analysis of the results of pilot testing, it emerged that all the presented topics were well welcomed by the students. The rare ‘negative’ feedback was related to the lack of practical session. This feedback underlines the importance for students to integrate theoretical lessons with practical especially in the case of the Course 3 - Risk Analysis and management of aquatic NNS Introduction to risk assessment tools- AS-ISK and MaxEnt. These practical lessons, although not included in the pilot test for limited time reasons, were foreseen within the full course topics and their execution is highly recommended to the staff of the Partners Universities that will carry on the lessons. Regarding the question ''The presentation meets my expectations'' some negative feedback also emerged for the topic General characteristics of aquatic organisms (Course 1), Introduction to risk assessment tools- AS-ISK (Course 3), and Introduction to risk assessment tools – MaxEnt (Course 3). The reasons for this negative feedback can be as follows:

- for the lesson on ''General characteristics of aquatic organisms (Course 1) the too generic topic of the lesson (students were already aware of the topic being students of the Biology Department) did not attract their attention

- for the lessons related to Introduction to risk assessment tools (Course 3) the negative feedback can be due to the specificity of the topic and the lack of practical examples (due to limited time).