Monday, June 3, 2002

3 Iowa Universities Go Online to Preserve Language Courses By MICHAEL ARNONE Iowa's three state universities -- Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Northern Iowa -- have formed a partnership to teach Eastern European languages and culture via an Internet-based videoconferencing system. The partnership, called the Iowa Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Distance Learning Consortium, is scheduled to offer its first courses next spring. The consortium will offer language courses in Czech, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian. It will also offer courses, taught in English, on regional culture, history, and politics. Participants on the three campuses will interact through two-way audio and video sent over the commercial Internet. The three institutions banded together to preserve their instruction in Slavic studies and related fields, says Russell Valentino, an associate professor of Russian at the University of Iowa who is director of the university's Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. He also directs the new partnership. Cuts in the state budget for higher education and a large number of retiring instructors have hit departments that offer Russian and other infrequently taught languages especially hard, Mr. Valentino says. In response to budget pressures, the University of Iowa increased the minimum number of students for a course from 8 to 12. The pressures that drove the Iowa universities to use distance education as a means of relief are felt by all language departments, not just those that teach less-common tongues, says Madeleine M. Henry, an associate professor of classical studies at Iowa State University who is chairwoman of the department of foreign languages and literatures there. At most universities, the number of introductory language courses has shrunk and surviving courses are overcrowded, she says. Higher-level courses have empty seats, she says, and some aren't taught every semester. The universities' foreign-language departments are also anxious about the decline in student and administrative interest in Russian and other languages with strategic value internationally, Ms. Henry says. "It's not just Tolstoy," she says. "It's about defense and security." "If we want to teach these languages, we have to get students in the classroom," says Steven L. Hoch, an associate provost who is dean of international programs at the University of Iowa. "We need a new model." Ms. Henry says the consortium will increase student interest in Russia and Eastern Europe because it will give students interested in those regions access to courses they otherwise might not be able to take. The videoconferencing system will also draw students who want to use technology in their education, she says. For each course, the universities will count the total number of students from all three campuses toward meeting the enrollment requirement at the campus where the instructor is paid. The class size for the language courses will initially be set at 8 students per campus, and for the culture courses at 10 students per campus. The three universities have been working together since last summer, when they received a $320,000, three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help pay for the project. The institutions had to chip in at least a matching amount, Mr. Valentino says, and the current price tag for the project is $650,000. The universities don't offer degree programs in Czech, Polish, or Serbo-Croatian, but the language and culture courses will count toward established degree programs in other subjects or toward foreign-language requirements for graduation, Mr. Valentino says. Courses in advanced Russian, Ukrainian, and Uzbek could come later, he says, as could a joint degree from the three institutions. The consortium currently contains only the three state institutions because they are geographically close and already have strong ties, Mr. Valentino says. But the door is open, he says, for other universities in Iowa to join in the future. If successful, the consortium could expand to include the Big Ten universities and even institutions in other countries, he says. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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