Education has been undergoing a revolutionary period in which hopes contrast to uncertainty making the future uncertain. The concepts of time, space, virtual and reality, and material, have been reviewed to adapt to new ways of teaching. In the last years, Distance Education (DE) has been pointed out as an educational alternative allowing a greater flexibility in the teaching and learning processes and have been useful mainly as support in practically every knowledge area, for instance, engineering. Despite the existence of various methodologies and technologies for distance teaching, it is important to emphasize that its application cannot be carried out the same way traditional educational model is. Trying to prevent this to happen, the qualification instructors is a key point once the professor is a fundamental element in this teaching process. Thus, this paper presents a relationship matrix which helps to identify desirable competences for engineering professors who will work with DE. In this sense, an illustration of the matrix in the production engineering context is presented. Such matrix establishes the boundary in which such competences may be reached thus facilitating its identification. The relationship matrix has been conceptualized based on the correlation of teaching theories and on professor qualification processes.
Distance education; Professor qualification; Engineering; Competence; Relationship matrix
