Tiffany Maiuri has connected UMF students and faculty with colleagues at a teachers’ college in Russia.
By Samantha C. DePoy
Staff Writer
FARMINGTON
The University of Maine at Farmington Web master is linking her passions of computers and Russia with a cutting-edge online educational exchange.

Tiffany Maiuri is using the Internet to connect UMF students and faculty with their counterparts at Komi State Pedagogical Institute in Syktyvkar, Russia. The sister colleges have been in an exchange program since 1993.

“This kind of project puts UMF on the cutting edge of using modern technology to enhance transnational communication, bringing ‘globalization’ directly into a central Maine classroom,” said Scott Erb, a UMF political science professor.

The seed for the project was planted a year ago, when Maiuri briefly lost touch with a friend who was on exchange in Russia.

Eventually, she reconnected and learned her friend hadn’t written e-mail because there was no Internet access for students at the Russian college, which has around 3,000 students.

So, last April Maiuri traveled to Komi State, located 800 miles northeast of Moscow in an industrial city of 250,000. The college focuses on educating teachers for the elementary and secondary schools.

During her six-week visit, she conducted a feasibility study on the status of Internet service providers in Russia and rounded up $1,000 from UMF to bring Komi State’s Foreign Language department’s 13 computers online.

Linking lines

She also set it up so several Farmington students would communicate online with several Komi students about current affairs, mainly the war with Iraq that had just started.

This fall she received a $7,500 grant from the Maine Community Foundation to return to Russia for two months to set up a collaborative online learning project. The grant that will be matched by in-kind donations from the two participating colleges.

With that money, the Komi Foreign Language Department, the department in which faculty on exchange from UMF teach, will receive two new faculty computers, a laser printer and one year of DSL Internet service for 13 student computers.

Most important, Maiuri will give teachers 30 hours each of hands-on training on how to use the Internet as a learning and communications tool.

Professors at UMF will partner with professors at Komi State to teach material that American and Russian students can meet online and discuss.

Dialing up Russia

Erb said he is excited about getting his students on board with the online partnership.

The two International Relations courses he teaches and his American Foreign Policy class will be discussing topics and readings with Russian students, he said.

He will keep online Web notes about what is being covered in class and both UMF and Komi students will have access to those notes and the class readings.

The topics will range from relations between the two countries, to current events issues such as the war in Iraq, terrorism, and global trade, he explained.

“Hopefully the exchange will help students on each side of the world to better understand how different perspectives color the way people interpret and understand world events,” Erb said.

“It’s a wonderful idea and the time for it has really come,” Maiuri said. “People over there are excited about this project. We are opening up a lot more than just an online exchange here.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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