Xi Jiaotong University is one of the earliest modern distance education pilot schools determined by the Ministry of Education. In March of 20001year, the online education college was formally established. The school has established the development idea of modern distance education "based on the west, facing the whole country and connecting with overseas", and positioned the focus of modern distance education as the continuing education of on-the-job personnel.

The school has built a leading online distance education support system in China, which has realized the informationization and standardized management of the whole process from registration, payment, study, examination, thesis writing to graduation, and provided online teaching services such as asynchronous on-demand learning, synchronous interactive communication between teachers and students, online homework exercises and online examinations. 422 streaming media network courseware and more than 100 large-scale open network courses were built and developed.