**3. The methodology**

300 International Perspectives of Distance Learning in Higher Education

refer to a type of education where students work on their own at home or at the office and communicate with faculty and other students via e-mail, electronic forums, videoconferencing, chat rooms, bulletin boards, instant messaging and other forms of computer-based communication as the United States Distance Learning Association says

This technology allows the student to access to interactive and multimedia web courses supported on communication media and allows the on-line collaboration and change of the studied materials. At the same time, it guaranties the tuition education by an expertise that follows the progress of the students, providing orientation and motivation and solving doubts among others. Through internet, the learning process is a just-in-time learning where and when the student needs it. This is one of the main advantages of Internet: the users can get abilities and knowledge regardless of timetables and schedules and with no need of displacements from the office or from home. So the advantages of the e-learning can be summarized in three: time flexibility, cost efficiency for students, and a great number of

When teaching basic subjects of undergraduate engineering courses, such as Descriptive Geometry and Technical Drawing, it is necessary to introduce new technologies that help the students learning. Learning can be achieved using the traditional face to face way or by the most recent remote way by means of what is called e-learning or distance learning.

One of the first things an undergraduate in engineering has to study, as part of the core matters of knowledge, is Technical Drawing or Engineering Graphics as the threedimensional (3D) perception of the students in those technical programs is based on Descriptive Geometry. Descriptive Geometry involves the study of different representation systems and more specifically the Orthographic Projection. The orthographic projection, derived from the Gaspard Monge Descriptive Geometry, gives the foundations of the Engineering Drawing and is usually included in most first years of engineering studies. The main disadvantage of the representation systems is that they are based on the work with the projections of the objects and not with the 3D objects directly. Therefore, the students have to develop, if they do not have, the ability to think spatially and operate in the plane in

The traditional core technical subjects, as Technical Drawing, can be helped to be taught and, what is more important, to be understood by the students by the new technologies and by the new design tools. Any activity in this sense is not enough to help the students to acquire the skills to see and work in 3D. As any other undergraduate courses, Engineering Graphics has to adapt, as well, to the new procedures of distance learning. Many researchers and teachers are involved in this new trend but not many references have been found by the authors (Toledo & Rojas, 2001; Rubio et al., 2007; Morales et al., 2009; Rubio et al., 2010) in which the distance learning is applied to the aforementioned technical field. It is therefore very important to develop tools or/and web applications that allow the

The main goal of distance learning in Engineering Graphics or Descriptive Geometry is to search for alternative methods to improve the education-learning process of multiple

introduction of this kind of subjects to the distance learning through the Internet.

(USDLA, 2011).

users at the same time.

pencil and paper.

**2. Distance learning of engineering graphics** 

To cover the aforementioned main aspects, a computer-aided tool that allows learning the foundations of Orthographic Projection (Monge Projection) has been developed. In a first stage the tool was thought to be used as a support in the classrooms for undergraduates in Engineering Bachelor Programs. In a second stage, due to the requirements of the students, the tool changed its target and was focused to the use on-line, taking advantage of the open access to the Internet with no special software requirements.

#### **3.1 The web site**

When designing and building a web site it is crucial to do a very good planning which includes establishing the aim and the scope very precisely, considering the potential audience, taking into account the available resources, and preparing a good navigation schedule inside the site (Marques, 2011; Pardo, 2011).

As everybody knows, the web navigation structure can be defined as the way the pages of the site are placed with respect to their links. The ability to capture audience in a web site depends on the design of the site itself. The best the design, the greater the audience. Any site design is based on pages as in a book, although the design of both structures is very different. In a book, the pages are chained and the procedure to find the information is to look for it in the index or through the lecture. In the web site, there are links between the pages so that the way to find the information is to jump from one page to another using those links. Therefore, the navigation system should be very clear in order to prevent the user to get lost and to facilitate the knowledge of where he or she is at any moment in order to come back to the initial position. The links between pages allow the classification of the navigation system in linear, hierarchical or complete (Fig. 1). The navigation system chosen for the created web site is the hierarchical one, which shape is like a branched tree. This type of navigation system is that recommended for sites with different but not many matters. Each branch of the tree is dedicated to a single part of information of the site. Generally, when a user gets to one of the head pages there are several links to the other pages and reversely, the navigation system usually has links to the head pages.

Web-Application for Engineering Graphics – An Example of a Distance Learning Tool 303

Style Sheet is a set of instructions that indicates how the pages should appear or how the contents should be shown within them. Any change in the style sheet will produce an immediate change in the appearance of the pages no need to do it in each one. In this way, contents and appearance are completely separated, which helps very much the design work.

The main objective of the web site is the on-line publication of tutorials for the Descriptive Geometry study. The potential users of the web site are undergraduate students of engineering and students of Descriptive Geometry in general (Rodriguez de Abajo, 2007;

The tutorials are divided into theoretical resumes of the fundamentals of Orthographic Projection (Monge Projection) and a collection of exercises with animated step by step solutions, that helps the students to understand de course. The application presented here gives support to the master classes as intended, and also allows the utilization in the elearning process, or the distance learning, by those students who are far away from the

As mentioned before, the application merges the use of two commercial software packages which allows first, the preparation of the animations of the exercises in light and easy-to-use

Together with the animated 2D solutions of the exercises, the application shows the 3D animated solutions, that constitutes an original contribution to the web applications on the

The web site is divided into three parts: main page, theoretical concepts and solved exercises

The main page is the home of the web site and can be considered as the main entrance to the web application. In Fig. 3 a) and b) both versions in Spanish and in English are shown. In this first page, as can be seen, the objectives of the application are given. This page is intended also to give the instructions for the use of the application in a very short and easyto-understand manner. In the top and in the left side of the main page a set of buttons allows the navigation to the different pages and places of the site. Those at the top are the links to the theoretical resumes and those at the left side guide the users to the animated

The second part of the web site is devoted to the theoretical resumes of the Orthographic Projection. The resumes are organized in pages by sections with the fundamentals of the subject. So, there is a section or a page for the fundamentals related with the point, there is another one for the straight line, for the plane and so on. As mentioned before, the way to move from one section to another is making use of the buttons at the top of the page. An

files, and secondly, the organization of the contents in a very friendly web site.

**4. The developed web application for engineering graphics** 

**4.1 Objectives** 

teaching places.

**4.2 Structure** 

(Fig. 2).

Rubio & Muñoz-Abella, 2011).

field of Descriptive Geometry teaching.

step by step solutions of the exercises.

example of this theoretical part is shown in Fig.4.

Fig. 1. Different navigation systems a) lineal, b) hierarchical, and c) complete
