The Sandbox Exercise Labs are designed to provide learners with an added level of hands-on mainframe practice and experience post completion of Interskill’s associated elearning Course Curricula. The Sandbox Exercise Labs consist of two parts. The first requires you to download the Sandbox Installation scripts from the MyInterskill LMS or for enterprise level clients we can distribute them via other secure methods. These scripts help you install and setup the data sets on your sandbox/test environment. Once the test environment is ready you can instruct your students to access the Sandbox Exercise lab courses on the MyInterskill LMS or for enterprise clients on their own LMS. The students would use the courses while accessing the sandbox environment you created. Click here to view a video explaining the installation of the sandbox scripts onto your environment.
Sandbox Labs Installation and Requirements
- The Sandbox Labs require that you have an internal Sandbox/Test mainframe environment. Someone on your team, such as a system programmer will perform the installation.
- Interskill provides you with instructions and installation scripts that automatically create the data sets/test environment on your sandbox system. You must request the Lab Installation Packages from your Interskill Learning Consultant.
- Once you have installed the scripts and created the lab environment on your sandbox system, learners will use the lab exercise courses on your LMS in conjunction with the lab environment you created.
- The person that performed the installation will need to communicate to the learner(s) that the test environment is ready and provide the learner with access.
- Note that before learners can begin the lab exercise courses, they should review the prerequisite Interskill course requirements. These prerequisites are explained in the exercise lab courses introduction screens as well as in the installation package instructions for each lab.
The Learner Experience
Each Exercise (Lab) has an associated learning course/module which guides the learner through the Sandbox Exercises. Each exercise also comes complete with hints and solutions to optimize the learning outcome.
Below is a step by step summary of how the Sandbox exercises are designed to work from a learner perspective:
- The learner would first complete the prerequisite series of Interskill courses associated with the Sandbox Topic of their choice, i.e. COBOL, JCL, JES, SDSF etc. For example, if the learner plans to use the JCL Sandbox Exercises, first they would want to complete the following Interskill courses as prerequisites:
a. JCL(z/OS) – Introduction to JCL
b. JCL(z/OS) – JCL Coding Basics – JOB and EXEC Statements
c. JCL(z/OS) – JCL Coding Basics – DD Statements
d. JCL(z/OS) – Advanced JCL Data Set Use
e. JCL(z/OS) – Controlling Job and Step Processing
f. JCL(z/OS) – Working with Procedures and Symbols - Once the learner has completed the required prerequisite courses associated with the labs, the Learner should then be assigned internal access to the dedicated training ‘Sandbox’ on your mainframe system.
- The learner would then access the sandbox exercise lab courses on your internal training portal, which will guide them through a series of programming and coding exercises to be conducted on the dedicated training ‘Sandbox’ on your mainframe system.
- The last exercise in the last module of each topic teaches good housekeeping habits. It is a “cleanup” exercise to remove any output created during the training.