Modern distance education refers to a visual and interactive form of distance education by using today's advanced computer network and communication technology to transmit multimedia audio, video or data in real time or non-real time.

As a new educational concept and technology, it can provide a fair, extensive and cheap educational method and greatly improve educational efficiency. Let learners no longer be limited by geographical location and class time, and the most valuable educational resources and excellent websites can be owned by learners anywhere in the world at any time.

Advantages of the third generation distance education;

It has the characteristics of transcending teaching time and space, breaking through time and space restrictions, allowing learners to choose learning contents, methods and processes according to their own conditions and needs, expanding teaching scale, improving teaching quality and reducing teaching costs, and also helping to solve the contradiction between work and study, especially suitable for on-the-job employees to study in their spare time.

The development of distance education in China has experienced three generations: the first generation is correspondence education, the second generation is radio and television education which rose in 1980s, and the third generation is modern distance education.