e following factors for development of ICTs in higher education are regarded as important
ones.
State policy in the eld of ICTs. One should mention that all the states are striving to form and pursue
state policy in the eld of ICTs in general, in particular, in education, including higher education. In
order to align levels of state policies it is important to organize exchange of experience at international
level under UNESCO auspices.
e majority of states created specialized educational and scientic networks, for example, RUNNET
in the Russian Federation, ASNET and ARENA in Armenia etc. Nowadays the most eective use of
ICT resources, electronic educational resources require activization of interaction between specialized
networks at technological and informational levels.
e majority of states are involved in active forming of state systems of information education
resources providing open and commercial access. As a rule, these systems contain storages of information
organized according to branch principle. For example, in the Russian Federation Federal system of
educational resources contains information portal «Unied window of access to educational resources»,
resources and information divisions of federal educational portal, storage of unied collection of digital
educational resources, open full-text library of educational and methodological materials, storage of
interactive electronic educational resources.
Technical support is an important issue of ICT development in higher education. Technical support
includes a large number of components beginning form apparatus and soware tools up to means for
designing and provision of access to information educational resources. Authors of the articles note
that it is necessary to unify, standardize and harmonize elements of technical support for ICTs in higher
education at the international level. Typology, level of service quality, conditions of using universally
proposed open and commercial ICT platforms dier a lot. It results in big challenges during formation
of integrated systems.
Authors of the articles are concerned with quality of electronic educational resources, in particular,
those in open access. e fact that the educational community lacks quite ecient systems for provision
the required quality of electronic educational resources is also mentioned. Proposals concerning
formation of systems providing quality of electronic educational resources, for example, according to
the principle of self-regulated organizations are voiced. An information educational resource is put
forward on behalf of a self-regulated organization which guarantees the quality by its image. ese
organizations could be established and developed in form of university consortia.
e quality of electronic educational resources is connected with challenges of copyright for these
resources protection. ese issues are highly relevant due to dynamic development of open systems of
electronic educational resources.
Existence of skill upgrading system for academic sta at state and university levels is a very
important factor of ICT development. Each state has well-developed systems of skill upgrading for
academic sta, for instance, in Ukraine there is a specialized institute working under the aegis of the
Ministry of Education. In terms of methodology the system of skill upgrading for academic sta in the
eld of ICTs solves the following tasks: it provides specialists who are not experts in the eld of ICTs
with the required state-of-the-art knowledge concerning ICT opportunities; allows to obtain skills of
using ICTs in special elds; enhances the necessary capacities, for example, informational competences.
ere is an interesting experience of Alaska University which proposes methods of skill upgrading
for academic sta allowing lectures and professors to create educational resources in their areas while
carrying out skill upgrading.
Special attention in articles is paid to a series of issues connected with development of information
educational resources. erefore, the address to UNESCO is laid down calling to draw attention to
methodological assistance and support for provision maximum simultaneous passing of the countries
through the basic steps of formation and development of information educational resources, namely: