Today, educational institutions globally face a big challenge: how to create and maintain a curriculum that develops the skills in demand in constantly evolving markets! Given the speed of change and quantity of new technologies being introduced, this task becomes even more challenging for technology courses.
Our IBM Z Academic Initiative Ecosystem team mission is to work with educators, such as yourself, to help you to easily incorporate mainframe content which is at no-cost to the university and the content is readily available, into your existing curriculum or if you prefer, to help create a specific curriculum for Enterprise Computing.
For those of you who are looking to get started, we have several options, all available right now for you:
- Promote Master the Mainframe Learning System - Every year we sponsor a global mainframe competition for all students. The student can enjoy learning about enterprise computing and also win prizes. No previous experience or specific knowledge is required. Also, the competition comes will full instructions and can be set as assignments for the students. When the competition period is over, we still offer the content as a Learning System so educators can use it during class or create study groups in your institution. The possibilities are many!
- Invite your students to be part of the ‘Student Hub’ - this is a student community with technical & personal development blogs, webinars, and discussions dedicated to those who are starting to learn about the mainframe.
- Register to join the IBM Z Academic Initiative where you can go access courseware, software, tools, and ready-to-go material free of charge! The following topics are available - z/OS Introduction, Linux on IBM Z, Introduction to COBOL, and others. Let's not forget that you can also request access to the IBM Z Academic Cloud or the LinuxOne Community Cloud so you can offer hands-on labs to your students accessing a real mainframe.
- If you prefer to offer self-study content or your students are looking to extend their knowledge and skills, there is a vast array of free, digital resources available, including the Mainframe Professional Certificate (60 hours of training and 3 digital badges). See Cultivating Talent Page for further details.
- Brand new Learning Journeys are ready for you to check out at our library!
We will be adding more no-cost courses to this throughout the year and academic students can access even more courses through the Academic Initiative site. The majority of these courses are hands-on with labs...so anyone, anywhere can access z/OS and start learning today!
If you have any questions, let us know!