For the first time, three of Iowa’s universities have combined their teaching expertise to provide opportunities for students to study Russian, East European and Eurasian languages via online courses.

In an effort to combat lower enrollments in some of the foreign language and literature classes, mainly due to state budget cuts; Iowa University, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa have combined their resources to create a new program called the Iowa Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Distance Learning Consortium.

“This program is the first of its kind,” said Russell Valentino, lead project director, associate professor of Russian and director of the University of Iowa’s Center for Russian and East European and Eurasian Studies. “I think the biggest advantage of this program is that it offers more opportunities for students to learn things they couldn’t learn before.

“As a result of the budget cuts here [University of Iowa] the minimum number of students needed to enroll in a class has increased,” Valentino said. “With [the center] we can combine all three of universities enrollments to meet these new requirements.”

He said the cap for this semester is 24 students, or eight from each university.

“The Internet-based videoconferencing system works like a three-way or four-way phone call where everyone can hear each other, but it has visual technology,” Valentino said.

John Thomas, assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures and director of the Foreign Language Center handles most of the technical aspects of the program.

“Since I have been with the program, I’ve been the person they call on when any technical problems come up,” he said. “I’ve set up the Web pages and folders for the class so the students can have access to them. The folders can be used to hand out class material and/or hand in assignments.”

The videoconferencing system has one camera equipped with a microphone in each classroom facing the students. In the room where the class is taught, an additional camera and microphone will be set up facing the instructor.

All of the students will see the instructor, as well as the other students involved at the other university locations.

“This way the students can actually see and hear the instructor as they teach the class and have the option to either ask the instructor or another student a question,” he said.

“But the instructor will more than likely have to repeat the question depending on how well the mic picked up their voice.”

In addition, they will also have access to the files and folders with assignments and other materials provided by the instructor, which are accessible and sent out via the Internet from Iowa State.

“The student pays for tuition and the textbooks for the class, which can be found at their school’s university bookstore and computer fees just like any other class they would take for any semester,” Valentino said.

Valentino said another important benefit a student can receive from taking one of these courses is if a student is thinking about a career in international affairs such as business, military or a non-governmental organization he or she can use this as a stepping stone to get the job.

“What we are doing is kind of a trial or pilot to see whether it can actually work,” Valentino said. “If this project is successful, we hope to regularize these instructions in these languages and make the courses [offered regularly].”

One of the main reasons that we are keeping the program between these three schools is that they all begin and end on the same date, and they all have exactly the same days off for holidays this semester, he said

“The program is scheduled to begin this fall and is offering two courses: Elementary Czech and Elementary Polish,” said Maria Basom, professor and chairwoman of modern languages at the University of Northern Iowa.

Each of the two courses last four semesters or the equivalent of two years. This fall Elementary Czech is being taught at Northern Iowa and Czech is being taught at Iowa, she said.

“I think some of the greatest benefits this course gives the students are students get to take courses that they normally wouldn’t be able to take,” Basom said. “They will have the opportunity to get to know other students from other universities and they have the opportunity to be exposed to this type of technology.”

Valentino said he has met his enrollment cap for both classes at the University of Iowa.

In fact, he increased it from eight to 10 students, but Iowa State and Northern Iowa are still working on meeting their required amount of enrolled students.

The Consortium received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education that established the new program in May.

Thus, the two universities were unable to get the information about the classes out until mid to late April, which was too late to get them listed in the class directory so students have had limited access to any information about this program and its courses, he said.

“Right now, I only have five people enrolled in Czech and one in Polish so far,” said Dawn Bratsch-Prince, Iowa State professor and chairwoman of the foreign languages and literatures department. “That is why it’s so important to get this information to the students.”

If a student does not sign up for either one of the classes this fall, then they will be unable to enroll in them until the first two-year course is finished, she said.

At some point during the next academic year, [Iowa State] will be offering a 3-credit class in English on some sort of Russian topic, which will be our contribution to the program, Prince said.

“We hope this new program will act as a model so that more foreign language courses that are not offered now will be in the future,” she said.