Throughout the programme these characters interact with the student providing formative guidance which is regulated by the student's own responses and progress. By actively answering questions and seeking information from the programme, students discover how the engineering design process operates within the company environment, and how a Concurrent Engineering approach may bring about improvements. To this end, ICE emphasises the value of communications within a company and their significance to successful concurrent engineering implementation. Additional relevant information is provided by hyper media links to on screen objects. Although designed for the PC environment without the capability of reproducing sound, a full soundtrack is also included to run in synchronisation with the screen display.
Summative feedback is provided for students on completion of the activity.
Further information will be provided in future editions of this IDER news sheet. IDER system developments. As discussed in the last edition of the newsletter, IDER Design Builder is a CAL system that guides users through specification compilation, design concept generation and final detail design and analysis. The detail design module incorporates details of proprietary products and components from which users can select the most appropriate to suit the predefined requirements. Several industrial concerns are contributing data for inclusion into the system, so forming individual catalogues.