Modern distance education is a new form of education developed with the help of modern information technology such as network technology and multimedia technology. It is a network education based on modern electronic information communication technology, supplemented by face-to-face teaching, correspondence teaching and radio and television (audio-visual) teaching. It takes learners as the main body, and students and teachers, students and educational institutions mainly use various media and interactive means to carry out systematic teaching and communication. Modern distance education is relative to traditional forms of distance education such as correspondence education, radio and television education. Network education is a new concept after modern information technology is applied to education, that is, education by using network technology and environment. In some documents issued by the Ministry of Education, modern distance education is also called network education.

It is generally believed that distance education has experienced three generations: the first generation is correspondence education; The second generation is radio and television education; The basic feature of the third generation is to use computer network and multimedia technology to carry out teaching activities in the digital signal environment, which is called "modern distance education". The outstanding characteristics of modern distance education are: richer teaching resources are available for the educated to choose from; The teaching form has changed from teaching to learning. It should be noted that the later generation of distance education does not mean denying or replacing the previous generation, and correspondence education and radio and television education cannot be regarded as outdated education. It can be said that it is an inevitable trend of modern distance education to combine media means such as correspondence education, radio and television education with new media means such as computer network and multimedia technology to realize the optimal allocation and comprehensive utilization of resources. The 1990s.