Trends of development and improvement of open education in Europe at the end of the ХХ – the beginning of the ХХІ century

The article reveals the features of socio-economic preconditions for the development of open education in European countries in the late XX – early XXI century on the example of the largest European educational institutions that provide educational services at a distance. The essential characteristics of the concept of open education are substantiated. Trends in the development and improvement of open education in Europe are analyzed on the example of the Open University of Great Britain, the National Distance Learning Center CNED in France, Hagen Distance University and the Virtual University of Applied Sciences in Germany, the National University of Distance Education in Spain, the Open University of the Netherlands and the European Association of Distance Universities. teaching. Statistics on the number of students, the number of structural units of educational institutions and their provision of educational services are given, as well as attention is paid to various sources of funding for educational institutions in Europe. This allowed us to identify trends in the development and improvement of open education and highlight the specifics and basic approaches to the organization of the educational process. Thus, as a result of the study it was determined that in the process of integration, open education has gained significant development, democratization and informatization of society. The main characteristics of open education are accessibility, flexibility, creativity, quality, proactiveness, parallelism, internationality and coordination. The leading trends in the development and improvement of open education are the progressive introduction of elements of open education in the educational process of the most popular universities in Europe, combining traditional and distance learning and the implementation of constructive ideas to improve the development of open universities