The Practice of Online Learning in Higher education: Prospects and Challenges for Ukraine

The idea of the paper is to briefly describe the practice of online learning and its implementation in educational process taking into account its challenges and constraints. Education systems all over the world including Ukraine are facing the necessity to reconsider learning and teaching paradigm and accommodate it to digital education environment. Among the features of online learning, we may identify student-centered approach, close student-student, teacher-student and content-student interaction, its wide availability and flexibility, co-creation, the opportunity to upgrade one's self-assessment and critical thinking skills, the choice to join either synchronous or asynchronous online courses due to the individual life and working schedules, blended learning opportunities, instantaneous feedback on students' performance, high level of digital literacy and etiquette to meet present requirements towards teaching and learning online. Challenges for Ukraine may include the urgency of teacher training, a new design of online courses, the necessity to educate students and teachers in terms of digital literacy and etiquette, the availability of high-speed Internet in remote areas, and implementation of new approaches to teaching and learning. Another challenging aspect of learning via the Internet is that a person may feel herself isolated, which may cause certain psychological problems. Making the first steps in the direction of reorganization of higher education system, the world community should also think about the consequences, learning online may draw.