An Interactive Virtual Environment to Improve Undergraduate Students' Competence in Surveying Mathematics

In this paper we describe the development of an interactive virtual environment whose objective is to improve undergraduate students’ representational fluency in surveying mathematics. One problem with teaching surveying is a general decline in the math skills of students taking surveying courses, and a decline in the students’ ability to transfer these concepts into practice in the context of surveying. In the paper we explain how an interactive virtual environment that presents multiple interconnected representations of math and geometry concepts, e.g., dynamic visual objects, symbolic or numeric expressions, and written and verbal explanations simultaneously on the computer screen, can help students acquire the math and geometry skills necessary to perform surveying tasks such as chaining and triangulations and coordinate calculations.