Upgrading Higher Education through Open Online Courses

The article discusses the importance of introducing open online courses into higher education in order to make it more effective and accessible. The stages of emergence and development of online courses among directions of remote education have been studied. Organizational and methodological aspects of development of online education in universities are revealed, barriers and prerequisites of use of online courses in educational process are analyzed. The characteristics of two types of such courses are considered, their advantages and disadvantages are analyzed, as well as possible ways of using already available massive online open courses (MOOC) are highlighted.