From 24 January to 4 February, the RSA-JINR Summer School was held on the iThemba Labs platform for students and postgraduates from various universities in South Africa. This year, the School had a video conference format for the first time.

One of the days in the School’s programme was fully devoted to the UC JINR project “Virtual laboratory to study experimental nuclear physics”. Despite the online format, in addition to introductory lectures by Sh. Wyngardt (RSA) and Yu. A. Panebrattsev, there were also practical lessons conducted by JINR employees K. V. Klygina and P. D. Semchukov. In the framework of the virtual workshop, students attended classes on the basics of nuclear electronics and had several virtual hands-on seminars on studying spontaneous decay and gamma spectroscopy. Jointly with the School’s organizers and using the Hopin platform tools, participants had an active dialogue in the course of which students asked questions to teachers, solved tasks, and got tested. Both lecturers and students were satisfied with the event.

Despite the fact that the virtual workshop was originally designed for individual work of students, in the course of this school it was possible to organize joint effective work of a large group of students. Regardless of the situation with COVID-19, this experience can be useful when conducting similar events at various universities and JINR Information Centres.