Hubina O. Organizational and Educational Foundations of Open Education at the Universities of Great Britain

The thesis is devoted to studying out the organizational and educational foundations of open education at the universities of Great Britain and to determining the possibilities of using the progressive experience of the British higher education system in the aspect of the investigated problem in Ukraine. The clarification of the organizational and educational foundations of open education at the universities of Great Britain gives grounds for formulating the following conclusions. The analysis of the state of investigated problem in Ukrainian pedagogical innovation is carried out. The application of the structural and logical analysis of a wide range of studies made it possible to distinguish the following aspects of the consideration of open education in the universities of Great Britain: educational and political, vocational and pedagogical, socio-pedagogical, scientific and technical, content. The theoretical foundations of open education in the universities of Great Britain were described, which allowed to define the conceptual terminology of the research, especially its key concepts: «openness», «open education», «open learning environment», «open learning», «open educational resources» the preconditions and stages of open education development are distinguished. They are the following: 1) correspondence education (mid-nineteenth century – 10th years of the ХХ century); 2) TV-radio education (20-ies of the XX century – the end of the 50-ies of the ХХ century); 3) multimedia education (early 60-ies of the ХХ century – mid-90-ies of the ХХ century); 4) on-line education (the end of the 90-ies of the ХХ century – the mid 20-ies XXI century). The main normative foundations of the introduction of open education into the educational process of the universities of Great Britain are outlined: ensuring the availability and flexibility of learning through ICT; the possibility of continuous lifelong learning; the possibility of using innovative learning tools; the possibility of improving and assessing the educational process; the possibility of active interaction of educational communities. It is found out that the methodological foundations of open education in the universities of Great Britain are: improvement of the content and methods of open education within the framework of the implementation of national strategies for the availability of training; development of a new methodology for designing learning through innovative approaches to the development of curricula; updating of content and methods of distance learning programs; introduction of innovative methods of using information and communication technologies in the educational process; improvement of the system of continuous professional education. The organizational principles of open education were found out. There are such kinds of institutions as open universities, hybrid universities, regional education institutions, colleges of higher education. The proposals based on the positive conceptual ideas of the British open education for the Ukrainian higher education system on the national, local and institutional levels are given.