This article defines 27 criteria for evaluating the functionality of e-learning platforms, grouped into three macro groups: (a) learning management, (b) learning content management, and (c) communications and collaboration tools. The proposed criteria can be used to evaluate any e-learning platform’s functionality. They allow teachers and administrators to make conscious choices about the highest-quality e-learning platform for their schools and developers to improve e-learning platforms’ functionality. The developed criteria became the basis for rating the functionality of Ukrainian developers’ eight e-learning platforms' and determining the degree of support (in whole or partly) of e-learning components, categorized on the cognitive, social constructivist, motivation, and e-learning theories (CT, SCT, MT, and E-LT). The results indicate that the lack of communication and collaboration tools necessary to ensure quality distance learning is the main problem of Ukrainian e-leaning platforms. Comparative analysis of the functionality of e-learning platforms and components categorized on the learning theories helped determine that only three of the eight Ukrainian e-learning platforms (Accent [Mobischool], Class Assessment, My Class) fully follow the CT, SCT, and MT, but these platforms are all commercial products; therefore, they only partially support the E-LT. Solving this problem will be facilitated by developing e-learning platforms with open access, financed by the state budget in the context of the development of open and distance learning for Ukrainian students, as well as improving communication and collaboration tools in the context of conforming e-learning components to the social constructivist learning theory.

The purpose of the study, which we started in October 2018 with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the intergovernmental Ukrainian-Finnish project “Learning together”, is to analyze the quality of modern textbooks for the first grade of the New Ukrainian School, to identify outdated scientific paradigms, to identify and systematize cultural problems of textbook publication, which should be taken into account during the editorial and publishing of textbooks for the second and third grades. Methodology. At the initial stage of the study, a bibliographic method was used for the identification and systematization of scientific sources, normative legal documents on the problems of textbook creation. The use of methods of discourse analysis, logical, semantic, context analysis of text and visual components of textbooks for the first grade of the New Ukrainian School made it possible to identify the problematic aspects of the textbook publication culture. Typical flaws in the culture of textbook publication for the New Ukrainian School are systematized using methods of scientific generalization and classification. The results of the research showed a number of problems: visualization of outdated Soviet discourse, systematic errors, consistency and logic of presentation of the material, fairly low linguistic culture of publications, and sometimes unsatisfactory quality of artistic design. The solution of these problems requires a complex, systemic and integrative approaches. This includes the training of editors, publishers, authors, the formation of their high social responsibility, the creation of a single scientific and informational space for authors, reviewers and editors based on the leading publishing houses and academic departments of publishing and editing, the organization of seminars, trainings, summer/winter schools, etc. Such work has already begun within the preparatory stage of the international project “Finnish support for a New Ukrainian School”. The results of the research were used during the All-Ukrainian scientific and practical seminar “New textbook for the New Ukrainian School: Requirements, criteria for evaluation, registration” organized by the Institute for the modernization of the content of education for publishers who worked on textbooks for the second grade of the New Ukrainian School (November 22, 2018), training for experts who assessed the textbook for the second grade of the New Ukrainian School (January 21-23, 2019) and training sessions for publishers of textbooks for the New Ukrainian School (March 12-15, 2019), prepared by using experts from the Ukrainian- Finnish project “Learning together.”