Current tasks facing the modern society, which are connected with increasing availability, comprehensiveness and quality of education due to employment of modern technologies, put forward a question concerning the priority projects of digital education. This article is devoted to the problems of digital education in the system of higher education in the times of digitalized society. The authors describe different types of distant education, paying the most of their attention to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). They analyze the positive and negative sides of distant education in comparison with traditional education and prospective positive effects of launching online courses, thus conducting comparative, methodological and statistic analysis of the distant courses on the basis of online courses designed by the specialists of St. Petersburg State University - the “English language. Preparation for the Post Graduate Exam” course, the course of Lexicology of the English Language and the course on “Cultural Studies of the Great Britain and the USA”. The authors analyze the construction of the courses, give statistic data about the participants, who have enlisted and have finished the courses, making conclusions about potential positive possibilities of the online courses.