Think back in time to a day where you were walking up-hill, in the snow, both ways, barefoot (without complaining) just to make it to your college lab class on time.  Of course, it usually wasn't that hard because we were studying engineering and loved to be in a lab anyway.  Some of us practically lived there.  Fast forward to today where some University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students may think walking to lab class is a waste of time.  No, they're not lazy or anything like that, they are just used to doing their lab experiments online.  It's a very innovative and practical setup of computer-based systems for data acquisition and control that has been installed in an engineering laboratory at UTC.  The labs include automatic feedback control systems, chemical engineering unit operations and environmental engineering experimental stations.  All systems! have data acquisition and/or control programs using LabVIEW software.  The software collects the data, massages it and presents it to the student users via a graphical window analogous to a hardware panel on traditional measuring equipment.  The programs are used students for data collections on the various systems.  Steady-state, step response and frequency response experiments can be and are used for system identification and design.  These systems help the students concentrate on the laboratory experiment and not about walking back home in the rain.