Enhancement of e-learning in geomatics by the integration of dynamic mathematics' tools

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) has introduced a Learning Management System (LMS) based on Moodle. This trend was a source of motivation for our teaching staff who have initiated a project called Exomatic for the enhancement of the basic course in geomatics attended by 200 students from the civil and environmental sections. The basic concept of Exomatic is a collection of on-line exercises with dynamic graphical figures and smart calculus tools linked together. This platform allows a fully automated correction and evaluation process of the exercises, is appreciated by the teachers thus can save precious time. Exomatic is mainly based on the interconnection of different resources gathered in a common web interface in order to simplify the tasks for the creation of exercise datasets and for the calculus provided by the students. This paper attempts to describe the technical structure of Exomatic and its performance, with a particular focus on the use of the dynamic mathematics software Geogebra. This tool is efficient for the graphical representation of geometrical features (e.g. resection, orientation). The paper will highlight the improvement of the users’ interface in the e learning environment and underlines the importance of graphic tools for better comprehension, and the usefulness of online resources in present education. It will also present the different open source materials employed in the development of this shareable resource, which can be integrated in other geomatic courses (e.g. photogrammetry and remote sensing). Exomatic has demonstrated the effectiveness of online dynamics resources in teaching the basic geomatic course.