Engineering in education, with an impact on the implementation of Agtech in the agricultural sector

The Systems Engineering program of the Girardot Regional Center of the Cundinamarca Rector's Office, an academic program that is part of the offer in face-to-face mode and whose objective is the training of integral professionals from the following human, technological, innovative, and scientific elements, whose comprehensive professional training entails an interdisciplinary training process, is a program that impacts the province of Alto Magdalena, where its territorial extension is 1,138.2 km2, of which 98.9% are rural and 1.1 are urban. Therefore, today graduate professionals are required engineers who respond to trends, dynamics, and needs of a social, cultural, environmental, economic, scientific, and technological nature and who assume the new methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges of professional training, oriented to the social and economic demands of the local, regional, and national environment, with an international perspective.With SARS-CoV-2, the academic program postulated research projects for the agricultural sector, aligned to the fourth industrial revolution with the UNIMINUTO 2020-2025 development plan
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, with the incorporation of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, the Internet of Things, automation, and robotics, among other trends in new technologies, and finally with the departmental development plan 2020-2024
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and the development plan Girardot is for everyone
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in the same way with the sustainable development objectives (SDGs)
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,
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where changes are articulated in the social cultural, environmental, technological, economic, and scientific context. "Colombia's agricultural sector is the one with the lowest adoption of new technologies; this compares with the DANE's
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2018 technical bulletin of ICT indicators, where only 16.2% of the rural population has access to an internet connection, which makes it difficult for introduce new technologies. "And to the diagnosis, we add that food production is increasing" (Osuna, 2022)
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. Based on what is stated in the summary, the academic program, in its proposal to bring technology, science, and innovation to the region, specifically to the agricultural sector, begins to apply for projects according to its environment, presenting strategies for research training. and creation, allowing students and teachers to permeate disciplinary and interdisciplinary developments, artistic creation, technological advances, and updating in the field of discipline, the foregoing in accordance with Decree 1330 of 2019 and Resolution 21795 of 2020 of the Colombian Ministry of Education
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.In accordance with what is mentioned in the decree, research is part of the training process in the lines, areas, themes, and groups of the development of new knowledge. Strengthening the engineer's commitment to his community and recognizing professional ethics in a pedagogical space, additional reading and writing skills of students are encouraged, and the logical and critical thinking component is carried out with field tests, in addition to the ability to consult specialized databases and the professional profile of the engineer, the generation of prototypes and designs and the generation of diversified intellectual production.