Information technologies have become part of our life, and academic sphere is no exception. Innovative education methods and techniques are now being used to train highly qualified professionals. One of the new tendencies here is open distance education based on information and telecommunication technologies. Another tendency is that education programmes and methods are now being unified, which has become possible thanks to the development and introduction of digital data transmission technologies. Distance education programmes give students an opportunity to learn in any place and at any convenient time. The greatest thing about distance education is that students can adjust the schedule and the curricular to their own needs and requirements.
Following the current tendencies in education A.P. Tolstobrov, director of the VSU Electronic Educational Technologies Department, published a book “E-learning and off-campus educational technologies in Voronezh State University”. The book describes the university’s telecommunication system, the ways of implementing distance education programmes at VSU, and presents databases stored in Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). The book also presents the VSU educational portal “E-University” that now stores over 800 e-courses, including open-access courses and courses developed within the frameworks of international Tempus projects.
