Originally published on the official National Instruments Blog.

Between the rising expenses of classes, textbooks, and mandatory tech, students and university programs need all the help they can get. Our Academic Site License (ASL) lets your academic institution partner with us to provide students, professors, and researchers with access to software, learning materials, and online courses.

Real World Experience

An ASL gives students access to tactile experiences that build their intrinsic engineering knowledge. Just ask Naval Academy professor John Roth.

His partnership with us provided his students with knowledge and hands-on experience that wouldn’t be possible without an ASL.

One project in particular involved launching a weather balloon, collaboratively built by the students. His project used the strongest benefits of an ASL, providing students with hands-on application that left them a real sense of accomplishment.

See for yourself: 

Better use of lab time

More experimentation; less set up. Installing our software on lab computers andstudent’s laptops allows pre-lab assignments or code up experiments to be completed when it works best for students.

For Roth, this meant assigning work outside class and allowing students to focus on the application in the lab. Building up familiarity and proficiency with the platform ahead of time let students focus on more demanding challenges in the lab, producing higher quality projects by the end of the semester.

Time efficiency through central IT management
Managing multiple single seat licenses, with individual start and end dates, varying access toolkits and modules, and separate costs puts a large burden on your IT department.

Bringing your licensing maintenance and management together under a single roof saves significant IT manpower. Our licensing software lets you integrate with industry standard license managers to provide one central place to maintain, manage and distribute licenses to your end users.

ASL owners also get access to the majority of LabVIEW toolkits and modules, as well as all previous versions. This lowers compatibility conflicts with older systems and streamlines collaboration with other NI software users inside and outside your university.

Success at a fraction of the full cost

Suited to teaching, research or student design, the software included in the ASL would cost more than ten time as much if purchased as individual licenses. Unhindered access to the significant majority of our software lets you build any application for a single, low price.

With his ASL, Professor Roth guaranteed access to specialized tools like LabVIEW Communications, specifically for prototyping wireless systems.

When the balloon launched required students out on the road to troubleshoot and provide on-the-go analysis from a chase vehicle using HAM Radio and USRP. None of this would have been possible without taking LabVIEW outside the laboratory.

Every student. Every lab. Every researcher.

An Academic Site License is a student, instructor, and researcher’s best path to using our software.

Pursue a site license at your academic institution >>

Already have an ASL? Visit the Courseware Portal to ensure you have the latest version of all the software and take advantage of the latest courseware available.