Available To
Students and Faculty (access to specific software must be requested by using the Request Service button on the right.)
Service Overview
This service provides 24 hour, 7 day a week access to university-licensed software used for classroom instruction and assignments. SVL offers no-cost, convenient access from nearly any common device to what would otherwise be expensive software. With SVL, students do not need to physically visit a campus computer lab.
Currently, specific course section numbers are required to enable student access to specific software available in the SVL. Without this information, the default setting is for students and faculty to have access to a basic Windows desktop, which only includes Office applications and browsers. Please submit a Service Request indicating which software is needed for your specific course.
PLEASE NOTE: After March 29, 2021, requesting specific software access will no longer be necessary. After this date, SVL will be restructured so that any student or faculty member can access any software available in the virtual lab environment by selecting from a pool of available virtual computers (desktop images). See an early preview. These desktop image pools include:
- Computer Aided Design & Maps: this includes such software as ArcGIS, Autodesk, AutoCAD, and Revit
- Data Sequencing: this includes such software as Geneious, MEGA X, Morphoj
- General vLab: this is a plain image with Microsoft 2016, Notepad++, ImageJ, web browsers
- Math & Statistics: includes such software as Minitab, Orange, R, R-Studio, SAS, SPSS, Mathematica, MATLAB
- Programming Languages: includes such software as Eclipse IDE for Java Developers, Python, Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio Professional
Service Details
- No cost
- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except during short periods of routine maintenance)
- More consistent instructional experience since Mac and PC users will have a very similar virtual desktop environment
- Compatible on most devices (Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Android)
- Up to 2 GB of temporary file storage on a semester-by-semester basis
Currently available software (as of Spring 2021):
- ArcGIS
- Autodesk AutoCAD
- Autodesk Revit
- Eclipse IDE for Java Developers
- Geneious
- ImageJ
- KeyShot (limited to users within the Colleges of Engineering and The Arts)
- Mathematica
- MATLAB
- MEGA X
- Microsoft Office 2016
- Minitab
- MorphoJ
- Notepad++
- NVivo
- Python
- Orange
- R
- RStudio
- SAS
- SPSS
- SOLIDWORKS (limited to users within the Colleges of Engineering and The Arts)
- Stata/IC (limited to users within the College of Liberal Arts)
- Visual Studio Code
- Visual Studio Professional
- Vivado (limited to users within College of Engineering's Computer Science and Computer Engineering)
- Web Browsers (Internet Explorer and Google Chrome)
Note for Faculty: If you would like to utilize Student Virtual Lab (SVL) as part of your coursework, please feel free to utilize the verbiage below for your syllabi or course material:
To complete coursework, please accessing CSULB SSO using your BeachID credentials and accessing the SVL chiclet. Select the applicable software package for your course. If you encounter problems or have questions, please contact the Technology Help Desk at 562-985-4959 or helpdesk@csulb.edu.
Requesting Service Enhancements
Service enhancements/requests will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Any special software application requests can be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and will require up to a 4 to 6 week period for review, testing, and implementation; it is advised that any new implementations are not done during active semesters to minimize disruptions.
It is recommended that any new software application added to the environment first be tested in a live classroom lab for at least one term before it is virtualized within the SVL service. This helps ensure that technical staff that supports the new software application has had an opportunity to discover any bugs and gain some relevant experience with the application.