UNIVERSITY of South Wales (USW) students will see a mixture of face-to-face and online teaching from the start of the next academic year.

The university, which includes the Newport City Campus, has been delivering its teaching and assessments remotely since March, but from September, it will begin to phase physical teaching back in.

Planning has begun to ensure the university's more practical courses which need specialist facilities - such as labs, workshops and creative studios - can return in a safe manner.

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Other face-to-face activities that can be run safely, in suitably smaller groups, will also be planned.

Lectures will be delivered virtually for the first term so as not to breach social distancing guidelines for large groups of people.

Professor Julie Lydon, vice-chancellor of USW, said: “We are looking forward to welcoming students back onto our campuses from September.

“Our provision will undoubtedly look different as we introduce small group work that can comply with social distancing guidelines in safe environments. Combined with virtual delivery, replacing for example our lectures, will ensure that whilst keeping our students and our staff safe, we can focus on providing the very best blended approach to education for our students, enabling them to progress through their studies with us.

“Students should be reassured that we will not be replacing face-to-face lectures with hours of lecturing on a screen. We will use that time for engaging in activity, discussion, debate and exploring issues and problems. We will do the same for other learning activity that we cannot yet safely run on campuses.

“Where we are running learning digitally, we will do so to USW's high specification to ensure students learn actively and feel part of our USW community. We will provide great personal support, engage students in enquiry and problem solving, and students will continue to have regular interactions with tutors and peers to a normal timetable.

“Whilst the start of term will look different, students should be certain that they will have an experience where they are a valued part of USW’s community and have a well-rounded and challenging academic timetable.”

Prospective and current students will be given more detail about how this affects their course over the next couple of months.

This comes after Universities Wales conducted a survey among the Welsh universities, with all six which responded saying they would introduce face-to-face learning from the start of the academic year.