A VIRTUAL LAB FOR ANALYTIC GEOMETRY

Technological advances and the apogee of Internet contributed to generate great changes in nowadays society, particularly including the use of information and communication technologies in teaching environments.

Digital environment is part of the students’ lives. Therefore, the fact of producing study material in digital format and uploading it to the Web lets students carry out the learning process in a more friendly style, interacting with different tools in many ways.

The research team “Engineering & Education Group” (Grupo Ingeniería & Educación - GIE) from the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Argentina, has been developing a collection of websites about some specific issues of Calculus, Algebra, Analytic Geometry and Numerical Analysis, as well as virtual laboratories. The Virtual Lab of Analytic Geometry is the latest one on-line and it is going to be used in the second semester of the academic year 2018.

When studying Analytical Geometry, students need to handle symbolic and graphic representations. The Virtual Lab of Analytical Geometry is a collection of applications designed to promote the visualization of the concepts taught in the subject and the conversions between graphic and symbolic representations.

The Virtual Lab of Analytic Geometry includes a set of Applets embedded in a web page along with definitions and self-assessments. Within the sections corresponding to Conics and Surfaces, a link to Websites related to the issues is given, to have access to an extended theory, solved exercises and applications.

This paper aims to present this Virtual Lab for the Analytic Geometry course at the Facultad Regional San Nicolás (FRSN), Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Argentina. As all the tools developed by GIE, this lab will be in permanent evolution, as new tools may be created or the ones existing may be updated considering the experience of its use.