Information Technology Services is hard at work on improvements to the University’s Virtual Lab, and students can expect to begin seeing the enhancements in the fall.The Virtual Lab, or VLAB, is a service that allows students to use a personal computer to access programs normally only available on public University computers, like Adobe Photoshop, Final Draft and SolidWorks.
“The basic mission of it is to give you access to the lab from your personal or home machine,” said Mike Smith, director of technical services. “For a lot of the software licenses, you have access to those in the computer labs. This gives you the ability to get to it from your own personal laptop.”Because some software is not licensed for student download, the goal of the VLAB is to expand the locations where students can access certain programs, said Sheri Thompson, IT planning and communications officer.
“We make reference to the ‘tyranny of place,'” Thompson said. “We don’t want people to be unable to do what they need to do if they aren’t in a certain location.”
The VLAB, which is funded by the student technology fee, adds value and convenience to students’ technology use, according to Thompson.
“If it’s a beautiful day and you want to be out on the Parade Ground and you want to use the software offered in the VLAB, you should be able to,” she said.
Because the student technology fee funds the VLAB, the service is mostly available to students only, which a few exceptions of faculty who need access for the purpose of creating assignments, Smith said.Smith said software licenses are the reason some programs available on the VLAB aren’t available for student download and some programs on public computers aren’t on the VLAB.”We pay licenses [on the VLAB] the same as if we offered the program in computer labs,” Smith said. “Sometimes [software companies] are fine with it; other times they ask us not to include it in that environment.”One VLAB change students can look for in the fall is the ability to   access a local hard drive while using the lab, Smith said.Presently, students cannot open files from their computers’ hard drives to the VLAB, and files can only be saved to TigerBytes II rather than to the computer’s hard drive. But Smith said students will soon be able to access files from their local hard drives and use them in their work on the VLAB.Another update coming in the fall is an improved user interface.
“It will look and feel different,” Smith said. “It will be more responsive and more stable.”Students can access the VLAB at vlab.lsu.edu.
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Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]