Important concepts covered in this lab include strings, reading data files, creating and labelling plots from these files and dealing with "not a number" anomalies. It is expected, by the end of this lab, that students can successfully collect data in CSV format from an open and remote website and that they can use a loop to create figures with multiple graphs to illustrate the data from that website.

Matlab is a key element in this activity as it is used to both obtain the remote data and to visualize it.

Students demonstrate alternative ways to obtain data elements (by telephone). They also continue to develop basic lab report writing skills in this lab.

First year engineering class, generally taught in person but done successfully online in 2020-21. This is an example of a lab activity performed near the end of the first semester in first year. No programming experience is expected before the students undertake this course, but they have experience within this class prior to undertaking this lab. By the time they undertake this lab they will have covered graphing, conditional statements and loops.

The lab activity is described in full in the attached PDF. This is the "student" version of the document, not the solution document used by teaching assistants and faculty at York University.

• Lab Description (Accessing and Analyzing Hydrometric Engineering Data Online) (Acrobat (PDF) 2MB Nov6 21)

A detailed marking guide is provided at the end of the document.

General overview of how I modified my teaching practice during the pandemic, including how I adapted my procedural programming class (Matlab): https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/PCEEA/article/view/14885 (J. A. Smith. Pedagogy in a pandemic: Teaching without exams. In 2021: Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG) Conference, PEI, Canada, June 2021.)