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 increasing numbers of students and internationalization of universities. All trends mentioned above go hand in hand with the revolutionary changes in educational technologies connected with the development of ICT. Main stages of the history of distant learning are analyzed and the role of ICT is specified. Besides, the authors pay special attention to the problem of digital content used in distant education as well as in the framework of web education. Foreign and Russian experience in elaborating of so called MOOC (massive open online courses) is analyzed and its problems are revealed. Also the authors present their own experience in elaborating and using multimedia module that is very close to MOOC. The didactical structure of the multimedia module is also declared.