(581a) Teaching Labview across the Curriculum

Data acquisition and controls software is frequently used by chemical engineers in both industry and academia. One such software is National Instruments^TM LabVIEW. To develop undergraduate students’ skills with LabVIEW, students are frequently exposed to the software from the first through last year of study across several courses. In the first year, students are introduced to the program in a Chemical Engineering Technology course over three weeks. After learning the basics of the program, how to utilize LabVIEW hardware, and ways to design a useful user interface, students are asked to implement a data acquisition program for a thermistor after following a detailed guide. This LabVIEW unit culminates with an open-ended project where students need to design their own program to control the salinity of water in a tank. In the third year, students are reintroduced to the program and asked to build more complex LabVIEW programs for various Unit Operations laboratory set ups with less detailed guides. Finally, in the last year, students are asked to develop their own LabVIEW program for a Unit Operations experiment with minimal instructions and constraints provided. Overall, this has proven to be a useful way to challenge students to build their own LabVIEW skillset across program curriculum, and these skills can be adapted into other data and controls programs that students may encounter later in their careers.