Open education as a university development strategic direction

The article describes the experience of UrFU in open online courses and their use in the educational programs of higher education. The authors identify options for implementing open education principles implementation and the aims of developing that are using the example of a concrete university. They look into main difficulties caused by using open online courses in university educational process: changed approach to organizing the teaching process; lecturers' workload planning; allocating responsibility for implementing parts of the teaching program; creation of educational content and its management as an intellectual property. Authors suggest joint copyright for the course by university and authors: benefits would be shared in order to motivate authors for further creation of high quality product and its continuous improvement. The article provides assessment of economic and other effects of open education development for the university, describes different models of entering open education market both for open online courses authors and new educational product customers. The article contains the analysis of risks, existing barriers nd possible future growth options for open education development. The article is based on the experience of implementing open online courses at UrFU educational space and at the national "Open education" platform. The authors of the article provide the description of practices that can be used by university administrators in order to upgrade efficacy of open education or facilitate the development of this area at the university.