SOCIAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS OF VIRTUAL UNIVERSITIES ACTIVITY IN THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL SPACE

The article outlines the potential opportunities of virtual universities to improve the quality of vocational education.The historical retrospective of the open and distance learning technologies development in European countries is investigated. The role of computer and telecommunication technologies in the development of university education is analyzed. It is emphasized that virtual education contributes to the development of qualitatively new content characteristics of communication, in the context of which the symbolic image of the modern personality is formed. It is revealed that the virtual university is a corporate educational center, a nonprofit state educational institution that functions to provide multidisciplinary, multinational and international training cooperation on the basis of distance learning. This allows students to gain educational experience and appropriate support, either partially or completely online. Directions of virtual education systems usage in international practice are analyzed. It is exemplified the educational institutions activities based on the use of Internet technologies and Internet resources as an internal communication environment as well as the combination of traditional forms of learning with technological Internet innovations. It was emphasized that due to the effective implementation and dissemination of education system virtualization in the developed countries, in Ukraine the virtual universities were started. It is concluded that the information society ensures the activation of resources that were independent of the previous socio-cultural paradigm, requiring the transition to a virtual mode of transfer, education, and storage of information in all spheres of human activity. Subjective necessity in virtual means of transmission, interiorization, use and storage of information in all spheres of human activity, including education as well, is determined by the necessity in technical integration or differentiation of conceptual and technological modelling of human activity. These processes, in their turn, make implementation of micro- and macro world realities in large range of real time and space, enhance virtualization of culture and expression in image and symbolic form of norms, ideals, values.