Concepts of the distance learning in forestry courses as a pedagogical mediation procedure at universities in Ibero-America

The forestry engineering courses in Ibero-America are mainly adjusted to traditional patterns of knowledge transfer, neglecting the communication technologies largely implemented in other areas. Front of this, the essay states that such curricula should be alternatively yielded by means of methods in line with the technological development brought about by the demands of society. We try to demonstrate that the new communication channels ease and compel the transit to the distance education, in which the tutor is incorporated as a dynamizing agent of the teaching process. The use of new channels in university education, either replacing or complementing traditional face-to-face systems, would facilitate a change in the current teacher-centered mode of learning towards a responsibility for learning shared by students and tutors, being these important stakeholders as pedagogic mediators, trained in the subject, that ease the teaching-learning processes. If the transfer of knowledge and technology in the university were adapted to this new multipolar communication system, with TIC support, the challenge would be the adaptation to more extensive media, in which the learning services can be offered to a higher number of students in real time, and student-directed collaborative learning models focused on skills. Distance learning at university by means of net platforms responds to the new goals of learning by doing, while at the same time addressing the demands of not university professional updating.