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The global economy runs on COBOL! Find out about the Open Mainframe Project's COBOL Programming Course
In Part 2 of this video webinar series, a mainframe educator talks about how he uses the Open Mainframe Project's COBOL Programming Course in his teaching curriculumIn Part 2 of this video webinar series, a mainframe educator talks about how he uses the COBOL Programming Course from the Open Mainframe Project in his teaching curriculum.
The global economy runs on COBOL, according to Dr. Cameron Seay, a mainframe educator who teaches at East Carolina University and Tennessee State University in Nashville. He says it's not hard to engage students when you tell them the facts about the technology. He shares his first-hand experience teaching mainframe content to students. He has incorporated the Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Programming Course into his curriculum for the Spring semester of 2022, and he shares insights about the academic landscape, the course, and more. He is joined by Angie Mejia, a student at East Carolina University who recently took the course and offers her feedback on the challenges and benefits of the course.
Dr. Seay leveraged the COBOL course 10 weeks into the Spring semester. He shares how the students were so amazed that they did not have to use Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) any more, and how he almost faced an insurrection from his students who wanted to know why did he hadn't taught them this before! The students loved Zowe and the reviews were unanimously positive about it.
Angie is a beginner student of COBOL and was very impressed with the
course. As she was taking it, she could see that the course was different from
other COBOL courses and books she had read. COBOL is unique among the
object-oriented languages that students are used to, she said. This course is
very detailed and teaches techniques in a sequential, step-by-step manner
which makes it easy for beginners. The course is not theoretical, but rather provides practical knowledge that she can apply
in her program code. After taking this course, COBOL has become her
favorite language and she enjoys working in it!
Dr. Seay teaches his students that “mainframe is a philosophy of what computation should be” -- performance, cyber-security, and reliability are integral to the architecture and not a consideration after the fact.
Check out this webinar for an interesting exchange about COBOL with Dr. Seay, Angie, and the members of the Technical Steering Committee.
Ready to start your COBOL journey? Dive into the COBOL Programming Course now!
This course is also available on the IBM Digital Learning Platform and Coursera.
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