Selecting educational information and reference resources for distance learning

The article is focused on the importance of selecting information resources for distant learning. In the era of globalization and information progress the modernization of the higher education system has a great importance for introducing the new approaches to organization of educational activities. The emergence of accessible information technologies allows the students to receive education outside the educational institutions, which caused the formation of distance learning. The demand for distance learning is increasing every year. The technologies for developing distance learning will be very important in the future. Virtual laboratories are especially popular in distance learning in chemical and technological departments of the universities. This paper presents a comparative analysis of virtual laboratories and reference electronic resources for use in distance learning for technical universities. Safety of experiments, clarity, lack of significant equipment costs, possibility of repeated experiments and quick analysis of results, lack of reference to the schedule of classes and the ability to conduct experiments at convenient time, as well as, if necessary, a wide coverage of students with different levels of training are the undoubted advantages of the distant resource. There has been given a comparative analysis of Russian and foreign virtual laboratories and the free reference electronic resources that serve as a tool in distance learning at technical universities. There has been stated the need to improve the implementation of functional elements for increasing adoption the interactivity of a virtual laboratory or information resource