The American automated test measurement firm National Instruments announced the NI Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (NI ELVIS) III, the newest NI solution for engineering students. NI ELVIS III delivers a platform designed to meet the specific needs of university engineering education.
The solution combines instrumentation, embedded FPGA design and web-based access to measurements and curriculum to create a collaborative, active learning environment in the laboratory, studio and flipped classrooms. With application boards designed by leading educators and industrial partners, NI ELVIS III expands the NI ELVIS platform to serve a greater set of course topics across electrical and mechanical engineering. Students can benefit from the easy-to-use, yet advanced, capabilities to work on challenging assignments and gain the necessary skills to design, build and test their projects.
“To become exceptional engineers, students need to be equipped with the right hands-on tools and learning resources,” said Kyle Flessner, vice president of the Technology and Manufacturing Group at Texas Instruments. “Our collaboration with NI to advance project-based learning using NI ELVIS III is the next step in empowering professors and students and transforming engineering education.”
Universities today seek to ensure program accreditation, student engagement and successful student employability. Instructors also require a flexible project-based solution for their classrooms and laboratories that supports the rigor of teaching technical skills while also helping students build career-ready skills like collaboration, open-ended problem-solving and teamwork. NI ELVIS III provides instructors with the only platform to address these challenges by incorporating student-centric tools for learning, measuring and designing in a singular and compact industrial-grade solution. With WiFi, Ethernet and USB connectivity on the NI ELVIS III, and compatibility with both Mac and PC, students can easily work together and rapidly interact with the instruments and online resources to quickly advance their skills to be industry-ready.
NI ELVIS III is built to teach engineering concepts throughout the electrical and mechanical engineering curriculum with applications boards and online, interactive teaching resources developed by leading experts in industry and academia. Companies including Digilent, Emona, Quanser and Texas Instruments have developed thought-provoking course experiments that drive understanding of fundamental concepts in areas such as electronics, mechatronics, controls, power electronics and communications, and provide a path to applying engineering knowledge to authentic design challenges. Instructors can take advantage of the programmability of the NI ELVIS III with languages such as LabVIEW and Python to scale curriculum, projects or problems to multidisciplinary applications including those that incorporate the Internet of Things.
