Get to know the amazing COBOL learner community

In Part 4 of this video webinar series, COBOL Programming Course TSC members chat with special guests:

• Elizabeth Joseph - IBM
• Tiiso Senosha - University of Johannesburg
• Janos Varga - UNIQA Raiffeisen Software Service Kft.

The skills gap is a major issue across many industries, and the Open Mainframe Project is helping fill this gap from a COBOL perspective with the COBOL Programming Course. The mission of the course is to attract the next generation of learners and help them add COBOL to their technical toolkit. This course was released in 2020 and the course PDF has garnered more than 12,000 downloads in the past two years! More than 13,600 mainframe IDs have been issued and the course has generated about 2,500 views.

Guest speakers Lyz and Tiiso, who are experienced and well versed in other programming languages, found the hands-on labs to be a key differentiator in keeping the course interesting and engaging. Guest speaker Janos, who is a contributor to the course, showed the multiple changes he contributed to the GitHub repository in the video webinar.

Hartanto, a member of the TSC group and a "COBOL committer," presented the enhancements made to the COBOL course from the feedback received over the past year. The course has been restructured to make it easier for learners to get started.

There is a vibrant COBOL learner community with over 5,000 members on the course Slack channel. It is rewarding to see learners help each other out through their learning journeys. Any learner can become a contributor and recommend changes to the GitHub repository.

Curious to know more? Try the COBOL Programming Course and become a part of this amazing community!