Blog Post

Exciting new user experience! The COBOL Programming Course Open Mainframe Project webinar Q2 2024

Learn what’s new and get an end-to-end walkthrough of the new registration platform

Malini Prasad

In the Q2 2024 webinar, guest speaker Ross Cruickshank, an IBM Z Developer Advocate at IBM, shares what’s new and does an end-to-end walkthrough of the new registration platform.

The COBOL Programming Course is a popular course with more than 5000 views, and learners with a sustained interest actively consuming and contributing content to it. The team made it clear that the content is not changing, but the way to register and interact with the content is new and improved.

What has not changed?

The course is still available at no-cost.
The course content remains unchanged.
Hands-on labs are on a real mainframe.
Awesome subject matter expert (SME) support continues.

What are the exciting changes?

The current z/OS image that hosts the COBOL course labs will be shut down after July 31, 2024.

Please note: All learners who registered before June 12, 2024, on this system are requested to complete their labs by July 31, 2024, to be able to earn their industry-recognized digital badges. Badges are earned by doing the video version of the course that is available on the IBM Digital Learning Platform or Coursera.

The new registration system launched on June 12, 2024. Learners register for the course labs on the IBM Z Xplore platform, which now hosts the COBOL Programming Course.

This branded route into IBM Z Xplore means that when you register for the COBOL course labs, you receive a IBM Z ID at no cost. This ID is available to you as long as the platform exists and you continue using the system. This is slightly different as the old system had a rolling 180 days, and dormant user IDs were purged.

Ross explained that as you keep using this system it's going to be available to you to do the course and anything else that takes your fancy around z/OS.

Note: Watch out for any host addresses and make sure to set VS Code and Time Sharing Option (TSO) addresses to 204.90.115.200.

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Watch the complete step-by-step walkthrough by Ross as he demonstrates creating an IBM Z ID, accessing the course, and all of the exciting content available on the IBM Z Xplore platform.

What are the benefits?

Emphasis is on modern tooling for learners new to COBOL. This helps keep the focus on learning COBOL by using familiar tooling interfaces.
Access to much more content and other modules like JCL, Security, and more on the IBM Z Xplore platform for continuous learning.
Earn more badges as you earn points by completing modules and labs.

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Exciting additional benefits of the new platform

The z/OS environment will be upgraded to Z/OS 3.1 in August 2024, which has the added benefit of having a CICS module that will allow users to have a CICS region to build and deploy applications.

Ross shared a sneak peek of what is in the plan for later this year - a switch over to IBM's Globalization Service to automatically generate translations to other languages. “Primarily because of the information of who joins the IBM Z Xplore platform, we're currently producing Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and on the way to doing Japanese”, said Ross. In the future, based on the demand, the IBM Z Xplore team is planning to introduce Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi automatic machine translations to assist people whose first language is not necessarily English.

Next steps

Get started on your COBOL journey today! This course is also available on the IBM Digital Learning Platform and Coursera.