Rewards of Mentoring

[billbo911]

I want to share an experience I had this afternoon that is one of the main reasons I mentor.

I am not a programmer. I am not a NI nor LabVIEW user (well, not yet). Yet once the new control systems were announced, I knew we needed to get our feet wet and get used to working in this new environment. I was able to make contact with a local NI "Sales Manager". As it turns out, he specializes in LabVIEW and the CRio. Unfortunately, he is not able to spend much time with us because he just got married and is starting a Masters program.

He was able to set us up with Student Editions of LV 8.5 and gave us several copies of "NI LabVIEW Campus Workshop". This is a "3 hour" training module. It allows the student to work through several training sessions using fully simulated data, or using the sound card to actually acquire data.

So, this afternoon I started the course with several students. We went through the first lesson, verifying the sound card and mic are working. We then moved to the first actual lesson that used LV. A simple acquisition of a sound, filtering it, then displaying it. Nothing really exciting, but it was the first step and went over well.

Here is the part that I found so rewarding. After doing this simple introduction (much more to follow in the next few weeks), one of my students, one who never coded a line in his life, slipped off to the side of the class and started "experimenting". Not more than ten minutes later, I walked by to see what he was up to. He had created a VI that prompted you for three variables "A", "B" and "C". It then solved for these variable using the Quadratic equation.

I know this is not an earth shattering discovery, but to me, seeing a student grasp a simple concept and taking past the next level without any prompting is the best kind of reward.