GLOBAL TRENDS IN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT AND THE CHALLENGES OF DISTANT LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES

The article deals with the main trends in foreign and Russian higher educational systems, such as the increasing numbers of students and the internationalization of universities. All trends mentioned above go hand by hand with the revolutionary changes in educational technology influenced by the ICT development. The key stages in the evolution of distance education are analyzed, and the role of ICT is specified. Moreover, the authors pay special attention to the problem of digital content used in distance education, especially in its online version. Foreign and Russian experience in elaborating of MOOC (massive open online courses) and the problems thereof are analyzed. Today, we face the new stage of distance education, the integrating one, based on complex virtual-training techniques. It is also based on the developing means of delivering information through a comprehensive introduction of modern communication systems, which allow transferring any form of information anywhere in the world. The authors' research showed that respondents associated the educational innovations with using information and communication technologies in the educational process at a university, as well as the availability of distance learning at the university. This demonstrates the modern challenges of the existing system of higher education in form of growing distance education technology, eliminating the problem of territorial boundaries, distances, and library, laboratory and human resource constraints. The authors present their own experience in elaborating and using a "multimedia educational module" that is very close to MOOC. Multimedia educational modules can be applied to virtually any educational programs of the country's leading universities and fully meet the objectives of the modernization of higher education. This allows making the work on students' knowledge and skills more efficient and also creates.the possibility of testing them.