Teaching Rapid Application Development Skills for Digitalisation Challenges

We are on a challenging path for digital transformation. Yet, this process proposes a challenge for availability of skilled experts as the success of digitalisation depends heavily on such workforce. Currently, we are in a shortage of skilled ICT specialists, which holds back the development of digital economy and society. To meet the rapidly changing business needs, a solution to the scarce workforce is seen in low-code development tools. These tools allow to develop software using graphical user interfaces with little or no coding skills, thus expanding the number of potential developers, and enabling fast delivery of business applications. Yet, to deal with the shortage of skilled ICT specialists, we need to educate future generations in the area of rapid application development (RAD). This paper focuses on teaching RAD skills to alleviate digitalisation challenges. We discuss newly developed courses for teaching rapid application development on the Oracle Application Express platform, and preparing young with skills for their future job market using self-regulated learning strategy. We investigate the suitability of this approach and learning gain, and show that self-regulated learning can be efficiently used to teach emerging technologies such as low-code development platforms.