The University of South Australia Mount Gambier Campus was pleased to announce face-to-face workshops and tutorials would return for students.

Face-to-face classes had been disrupted for the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The university welcomed over 100 starting students during orientation week, with meet-and-greet activities which UniSA Regional Manager Ian McKay said were appreciated by attendees.

“They will have had that initial opportunity to meet other students in their group and, in most cases, they would have had the opportunity to meet their local lecturers as well,” Mr McKay said.

“Orientation was still largely online because it was planned to be online before the decision was made to go face-to-face.”

Mr McKay said he was glad classes would return to face-to-face learning as it was beneficial for students and would return the vibrancy to campus.

“It allows them to develop stronger relationships with other students within their group, because when they’re online it’s a different relationship than face-to-face,” he said.

“It will be a little while longer because there was planning in some programs to deliver online because that’s what we were anticipating, so it will be a bit of a staggered return to face-to-face.

“But certainly the aim is for all workshops and tutorials to move back to face-to-face.”