Web-Based Encyclopedic Resources in the Field of Education: Analysis of Contemporary Models and Development Trends

Abstract

This article provides an overview of contemporary web-based encyclopedic resources with the aim of identifying their characteristics, advantages, and limitations in the context of their use in education. The relevance of the study stems from the growing volume of digital information in the educational sphere, the need to systematize and unify it, and to ensure open access to verified information. The focus is on analyzing various models of organizing encyclopedic content, mechanisms for ensuring its quality, methods of structuring knowledge, and the functional capabilities of the respective resources. Open, editorial, peer-reviewed, aggregated, and specialized models of web-based encyclopedic resources are characterized. Wikipedia is considered as an example of an open model, Encyclopaedia Britannica as an editorial model, and Scholarpedia as a peer-reviewed model. The analysis also includes the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia as an example of a national universal resource, Encyclopedia.com as an aggregator of encyclopedic and reference materials, and the ERIC Thesaurus as a specialized terminological resource in the field of education. Special attention is given to the Ukrainian Electronic Encyclopedia of Education as a national, sector-specific, web-oriented encyclopedic resource that combines an expert-editorial model of content organization with the capabilities of semantic knowledge structuring. The review found that web-based encyclopedic resources differ in their approaches to content creation, level of openness, quality control mechanisms, and technological infrastructure. Open resources ensure the scalability and timeliness of information updates, while editorial and peer-reviewed resources provide a higher level of reliability, and specialized resources offer more precise structuring and unification of knowledge in a specific field. It is demonstrated that the Ukrainian Electronic Encyclopedia of Education can be viewed not only as a reference resource but also as a tool for supporting and developing the conceptual and terminological framework of pedagogy and psychology. A new direction in the development of digital encyclopedic systems is also outlined, involving the use of artificial intelligence tools for content creation and updating. The effectiveness of web-based encyclopedic resources in the field of education is determined by a combination of content, knowledge organization models, technological solutions, and mechanisms for ensuring the reliability of information.