The article is devoted to the problem of specification of approaches to the design and implementation of electronic educational courses in conditions of continuously and dynamically changing digital information and learning environment of the modern university. Based on the results of the content analysis of the digital infrastructure and regulatory documentation of the Siberian Federal University and the discursive analysis of the leading trends in the field of digital education, necessary conditions for a successful professional pedagogical activity are described. On the basis of smart education principles, possible solutions to the problems of teaching at university, such as personification of teaching, project-oriented courses and initiating the launch of mechanisms for students’ informal self-education are synthesized and justified.

A Cathedral or a Market? Textbook as an Open Source Project

For over twenty years school books have been accompanied by digital resources – once stored on attached CD-ROMs, lately also in the Internet services of publishers. But only since the launch of the program „Cyfrowa szkoła” („Digital School”) conducted by the ministry of education has widespread access to free educational materials become possible. Changing the carrier makes the current model of preparation and sharing the content, which lets the publisher control every step, go out of date. It will most likely be replaced by the model typical for the digital world, where the information wants to be free, accessible instantly, ready for modification and further distribution. In the article the relationship between Ministry of National Education and educational publishers after 1989 has been presented. The stages of the development of the publishing market, as well as their technological and social aspects, enhancing the intensity and the speed of changes, were taken into account. To describe the situation on this market the metaphor of the „cathedral” and the „bazaar”, drawn from Eric Raymond’s text on the open source phenomenon, was used. Acknowledging the „bazaar model” of working on textbooks as the natural consequence of withdrawing from the traditional model makes it necessary to ask questions about the effects of these decisions and especially – the future of textbooks. The significance of the issues analyzed in this paper is proven by the discussions ongoing lately in many countries.