Digitalization as factor of improving quality and competitiveness of university education in Russia

The socio-economic and political realia of the modern world order are based on the digital economy where economic growth, as well as ensuring the competitiveness of all economic entities, remain acute development challenges. Knowledge is becoming an undeniable factor that can achieve positive results in solving these problems. Since 2004, proposals for the introduction of various indices and methods to assess the state of the modern economy have intensified. Thus, the KEI index characterizes the knowledge economy in such areas as institutional mode, innovation, education and information and communications technologies. There is going an intensive process of developing the concept of education digitalization, on many aspects of which the discussion has unfolded. The present study focuses on such components of this concept as creating a new quality of education as a key priority for the development of education, which in turn is connected with new forms and methods of higher education. The contemporary situation requires that Russian education should increase the quality content of the existing processes, as well as more actively introduce the services of higher education into the world’s market. There is given the analysis of the legal and regulatory framework which provides the development and functioning of electronic information and educational environment in universities. The research shows how gradually the complexity of tasks given to digital environment increased, in the course of development of digital technologies and improvement of electronic technologies of pedagogical interaction in higher education. The authors notice that there are efficient criteria of evaluating digital educational resources, the compliance to which provides Russian education competitiveness and a rightful place in the world market of educational services.