The article deals with the problem of modeling electronic educational resource (EER) in Russian as a foreign language (RFL). Based on the comparison of the structure of EE in RFL and the structure of the traditional textbook, the common features and differences of EER are revealed. The purpose of the article is to describe the universal structure of the distance course in RFL, providing the opportunity to teach communication skills.

Given the general methodical approaches to teaching RFL we outline organizational and functional units of several levels: unit, week, module, course. The correlation of the main elements of EER with the elements of the textbook is established: the unit relates to the aspect lesson, the week - to the weekly training schedule, the module to the cycle and the course to the concentre.

We conclude that in the RFL EER general methodical principles of introducing material to students (teaching oral aspects ahead of written aspects, interconnected teaching of all aspects, going from easier to complex tasks, concentric principle) have to follow the principle of the functional rigidity of the EER course structure. The main special features in the structure of EER are associated with the material being introduced in a more fragmented way; the presence of mechanic feedback in the control; a particular set of training steps. We demonstrate the implementation how the rigid EER structure by the example of the distance course "Russian as a foreign language" on the Coursera platform (authors: I. A. Gonchar, D. V. Kolesova, T. I. Popova, K. A. Rogova, O. V. Khorokhordina). The functional rigidity of the structure of this distance course is provided by the methodical appropriateness of the proposed training steps that reflect the stages of communicative competence formation - from challenge (unit "Watching video") to understanding (unit "Listening to podcast") and reflection (unit "Reading in Russian"), then to improving grammatical skills (unit "Revising grammar") and moving on to speech activity (units "Listening", "Speaking Russian", "Writing in Russian"). The presence of a control unit (peer-reviewed) at the end of each cycle allows the student to demonstrate the ability to solve communication problems. The functional rigidity of the courses structure is supported by the consistency of speech system: language material is selected in relation to particular communication genres, and grammar phenomena are linked to their textual fulfilment (functional semantic approach). The proposed structure of EER reflects the education contents and the sequence of the location of the training material.