(1) First Generation Distance Education: Correspondence Education
The first generation of distance education is correspondence education with printed teaching materials as the main learning resources and written assignments and postal delivery of correction and evaluation (correspondence counseling) as the main communication means (main technical characteristics). The main representatives are correspondence education and off-campus education carried out by independent correspondence schools and traditional universities.
(2) The second generation of distance education: mass media education.
The second generation distance education is a broad concept, which refers to the distance education based on postal communication and printing technology, using various mass media such as radio and television (satellite and microwave), audio/video recording, telephone/telex and so on. Its main form is radio and television education.
The main representatives of the second generation distance education are open university, radio and television university and other independent distance education universities.
The dominant teaching media of the first and second generation distance education mostly adopt the one-to-many one-way communication form, whether it is correspondence teaching materials or radio and television recordings. Therefore, the first-generation and second-generation distance education can't realize the two-way communication between teachers and students and between students. The communication mode is mainly correspondence teaching through post and telecommunications technology and corresponding service system, especially the correction and evaluation of students' homework, which has a long operation cycle and low efficiency. Although telephone is a very effective two-way communication tool, it has not been popularized or the communication cost is high for a long historical period, and its application in distance education is not sufficient. The two-way interaction between teachers and students and between students is not timely and sufficient, which is an obvious deficiency of the first and second generation distance education. It needs to be made up by organizing regular or irregular face-to-face tutoring and answering questions.
(3) the third generation of distance education: modern distance education
The third generation distance education is a modern distance education based on the application of modern information and communication technology with two-way interaction. Its technical foundation is mainly computer technology, multimedia technology and modern communication technology, and its core is network technology. The third generation distance education not only uses computer, communication and digital satellite networks and computer-based multimedia technology, but also includes the technical media of the second generation or even the first generation distance education, such as audio, video and printed materials. From the development trend of educational technology, more attention is paid to the cooperation of media and overall design. Its main technical feature and advantage is two-way interaction, that is, through digital, multimedia and other information technologies, it can realize the communication and interaction between man and machine, strengthen the two-way communication between teachers and learners, and greatly promote personalized learning and collaborative learning between learners.
Modern distance education technology media are more abundant, including radio and television, video teaching, cable television, video teleconference, satellite television, teletext, computer multimedia and interactive network system. With the construction and improvement of national and global information infrastructure, the increasing popularity of information technology and the continuous enrichment of online teaching resources, the third generation distance education has achieved leap-forward development, and the quality and efficiency of education have been greatly improved. Since 1990s, China began to organize and implement the trans-century modern distance education project. In the action plan of education revitalization facing 2 1 century, the Ministry of Education listed modern distance education as one of the six cross-century education projects organized and implemented nationwide. At present, the satellite TV education network centered on China Education TV Station and relying on local education TV stations, cable TV stations and satellite ground stations all over the country has developed to a considerable scale and level, which has created the necessary conditions for building the third generation distance education technology environment based on computer network, TV network and telecommunication network in China. 200 1, 65438+February, China Education Satellite Broadband Transmission Network "Synchronous Classroom of Basic Education" was launched, and the courses synchronized with teachers' teaching were played through IP (Internet Protocol) multimedia courseware and TV, so that most parts of the country could watch and learn in real time, or download the courseware to a computer server through IP data broadcasting, and choose non-real-time learning.