**7. Conclusion**

314 International Perspectives of Distance Learning in Higher Education

Fig. 19. Last snapshot giving the true size of the path followed by the drop

The web application has been used successfully during the two last years with undergraduate students of engineering programs within the Bologna Process in a number greater than 300 students per year. In fact, even though the application was thought, at first, as a tool to help the teachers in the master classes, the very good reception given by the students forced us to transform it into a web application which is the form it has at the

The on-line tool has been of special interest to those students with no previous training in technical drawing. The application gives them the possibility of preparing the subject on their own rhythm, stopping whenever and wherever they need to focus on the different

A measure of the application success could just be the students request to create the web site, but a more accurate measure should be done. The academic results before and after the use of the application has been considered to evaluate the goodness of the application. The percentage of students that passes the subject every year can be a good indicator of the influence of the application. Obviously, the students of different years are not the same, and for that reason the academic results could not be really comparable; and on the other hand the application should not be the only influence factor in the academic results. Apart from the academic results and the requirement of the students to create the application, and also their oral feedback, no other indicator has been considered to analyze the goodness of the application. As an example, between 2004 and 2008 the percentage of students that passed the subject was between 35% and 40%. Since the year in which we started to use the tool

**6. Analysis of the academic results** 

moment.

sections of the course.

The teaching of core subjects in undergraduate engineering programs has change in the last years due to the use of the new techniques and technologies. This is the case of Orthographic Projection, Technical Drawing, or Engineering Graphics in general. Here we have presented a Web application (http://turan.uc3m.es/uc3m/dpto/IN/dpin11/fabdis/ index\_000.htm) for teaching/studying Orthographic Projection that has been developed firstly as a tool to enrich the master classes, and after, as required by the students, as an online application focused on the personal work they have to carry out in the framework of Bologna Process.

Two softwares have been used in the development of the tool: Flash® to prepare the animated solutions of the proposed exercises, and Dreamweaver® to design and create the web site.

The site is organized in two main parts, apart from the home page: the theoretical tutorials of the main concepts, and the animated proposed exercises that include in every one not only the 2D step by step animation but also the 3D animation. These 3D animations constitute a very interesting contribution to this kind of applications because they help the students to develop the ability of connecting the 2D pencil-and-paper problems with the 3D real problems.

It has been proved by the authors that the use of the application in class and on–line by the students themselves, has produced better academic results. The web application is still alive and different sections should be implemented in the future: an interactive exercise solution part and also an evaluation part. That will definitely improve the quality and the scope of the tool for the distance learning purposes.
