**1. Introduction**

The new global communication systems and their integration in all media communication, together with their potential interactivity, are changing our culture and are introducing new questions and challenges in the educative system. The teaching practices are strongly impacted by the development of the new technologies, not only because they influence the professional skills of the teachers, but also because of the roll they have assumed in the global university context.

Although these new techniques are arising in the last years in the university education, the teaching-learning processes are based mostly on that of the 15th century. There is still a dominance of printed over the audiovisual and computer media in the transmission of knowledge.

The idea is then, how to incorporate, in a pedagogical way, these new technologies as useful tools for the presence and distance learning. The possibilities that the virtual environments offer, as potential spaces of collaboration for the learning processes and also for the professional training, are only an example of the great opportunities of these new technologies in the university education.

The use of computer systems for the development of teaching activities is quite recent, but the evolution of their use is very fast. In fact, in a short period of time (few years) the computers have changed their use from being the helping tool of the teachers in the classrooms to being the main character in the distance learning process through the wide world web, in what is called the e-learning.

The distance learning or the e-learning is a new way of education developed thanks to the new information technologies and internet. It is based on the easy distribution of educational materials and communication tools to create a learning frame. There are plenty of definitions for distance learning, but all of them are based in the same idea: it can be thought of as education or training delivered to individuals who are geographically dispersed or separated by physical distance from the instructor using computer and telecommunication facilities (Bélanger & Jordan, 2000) or as other authors describe, it is a process to create and provide access to learning when the source of information and the learners are separated by time and distance, or both (Honeyman & Miller, 1993). It also can

Web-Application for Engineering Graphics – An Example of a Distance Learning Tool 301

projection systems focused on high school or undergraduate university programs. Two

 *From the student point of view*: as mentioned before, the students have to cope with two realities, the objects and their projections. It is a pedagogical target to decrease the conceptual distance between them, as part of the Descriptive Geometry learning process. The student has to became the observer of the object positioning himself at different points of view and has to be able to establish the connection between the Orthographic Projection and the object and backwards, being able to see the reversibility of the process. At the end, the student has to develop the ability to

 *From the teacher point of view*: although Descriptive Geometry is based on clear conventions, which should create a very easy learning environment, difficulties arise due to the lack of 3D perception of the students. The animated presentations and drawings should be a perfect complement for the teaching activity as they allow short

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

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

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

communicate with a nonverbal language as it is the Technical Drawing.

explanations with a very little amount of contents lost.

access to the Internet with no special software requirements.

schedule inside the site (Marques, 2011; Pardo, 2011).

reversely, the navigation system usually has links to the head pages.

aspects have to be taken into account:

**3. The methodology** 

**3.1 The web site** 

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 (USDLA, 2011).

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 users at the same time.
