Professor Kevin Jetton at Texas State University, TxState, recently decided to re-introduce IBM Z z/OS Enterprise COBOL in existing curriculum. A review of the recent IBM z/OS teaching material provided an opportunity for a new syllabus complete with videos, video quiz questions, and an Open Mainframe Project, OMP, github repository complete with COBOL education book, source code, JCL, data, and prescribed labs.
TxState preference is to use Marist z/OS as the lab system for several reasons:
1) Marist z/OS systems programmer support
2) Relatively easy process for educator to obtain professor and student IDs
3) Ability for professor to reset student passwords
4) Ability for professor to see all student data sets and job output
5) Past familiarity and comfort level with using Marist z/OS environment
IBM created a wealth of z/OS teaching material recently which includes
"COBOL Programming with VSCode"
TxState z/OS Enterprise COBOL syllabus includes:
1) IBM Enterprise COBOL learning video's
2) OMP Enterprise COBOL github source, JCL, data, labs
3) OMP Enterprise COBOL learning and labs instructional material
"COBOL-Programming-Beginning.pdf"
"COBOL-Programming-Advanced.pdf"
4) Marist z/OS as the lab environment
TxState needed the OMP Enterprise COBOL source, JCL, and data transferred to the Marist z/OS environment for lab execution.
Result: TxState and others have access to Marist z/OS data sets containing the OMP Enterprise COBOL github source, JCL, data and student lab setup instructions.
ZPROF.COBOL.SETUP
JCL to setup professor and student lab data sets
SUBMIT ZPROF.COBOL.SETUP(STEP1)
Comments at the end of JCL member STEP1 explain the process
Other Enterprise COBOL video assets for class consideration:
https://developer.ibm.com/videos/intro-to-cobol-write-your-first-program/
https://developer.ibm.com/videos/cobol-fridays-ready-set-code-write-your-first-cobol-program/
https://developer.ibm.com/videos/cobol-fridays-lets-talk-syntax-intrinsic-functions/
https://developer.ibm.com/videos/lets-talk-syntax-data-types-and-handling-variables/
Paul Newton, paulnewt@us.ibm.com, is available to assist educators with Enterprise COBOL course setup using Z Academic Cloud, aka Marist z/OS.
Please respond with anything you feel would be helpful to you. I work closely with the Marist College z/OS systems programmer / systems administrator.