Electronic education as foundation for democratic and legal future

The paper deals with the research of the features of emergence, implementation and functioning of e-education as a foundation of democratic and legal future of Ukraine and the world, by studying and generalizing the existing array of developments of leading, domestic and foreign scientists. Various concepts of e-education are analysed, proceeding from which the author's definition of this concept is provided, based on personal understanding of this term, from the standpoint of theoretical and legal analysis and contemporary challenges of society development. It is determined that the main prerequisites and causes for the emergence and development of e-education are: the pressure of the information society; globality as a feature of the information society; rapid development of information and communication technologies; exponential growth of knowledge accumulated by mankind and the inability to assimilate it effectively through conventional methods and approaches; practically exhausted possibilities of conventional personnel training for the realization of modern objectives; lack of information and communication technology specialists. The world practices of introducing e-education in the universities of the USA and Europe is researched, where the curricula at the universities, unlike most of the domestic ones, provide less class hours and much more autonomy on the student's part. It is further concluded that its effectiveness is not lower than the effectiveness of conventional education, provided the availability of quality content of education and competent development of the program. The legal framework for the introduction and development of eeducation in Ukraine, which is a key driving force in many fields and a prerequisite for the development of modern Ukrainian society, is researched. The content and peculiarity of creation and functioning of electronic libraries as an integral element of e-education are covered, allowing to further eliminate duplication of digitized documents, solve the issue of quality presentation of documents to the user, provide savings of financial and human resources. The conclusion is made on the importance of modernizing the content of educational programs, as well as the main purpose of e-education