Female students’ perception of m-learning in the higher education institutions of Palestine during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract To understand the viability of utilizing m-learning as the principal facilitation channel of education, the present study aims at identifying the Palestinian female students’ perceptions of using mobile phones in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Gaza Strip to investigate the influence of using mobile phones on the female students’ academic achievement. For the purpose of the study, a questionnaire was designed by the researchers to collect the data from a sample of (156) second-level diploma female students who were selected from the Departments of Child Education and Midwifery at the University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS), and the quantitative descriptive analytical approach was followed. The results indicated that the use of mobile phones improved the UCAS female students’ skills, enhanced their academic achievement, made the learning experience more enjoyable, and improved their use of mobile devices. Additionally, there is no statistically significant relationship between the students’ perception of using mobile phones in the learning process and their academic specialization and their academic achievement. Upon the results of the study, the researchers recommend implementing m-learning in the educational process effectively and conducting future studies to measure the impact of courses’ content design and educational programs using smartphone applications.


Abstract:
To understand the viability of utilizing m-learning as the principal facilitation channel of education, the present study aims at identifying the Palestinian female students' perceptions of using mobile phones in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Gaza Strip to investigate the influence of using mobile phones on the female students' academic achievement. For the purpose of the study, a questionnaire was designed by the researchers to collect the data from a sample of (156) second-level diploma female students who were selected from the Departments of Child Education and Midwifery at the University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS), and the quantitative descriptive analytical approach was followed. The results indicated that the use of mobile phones improved the UCAS female students' skills, enhanced their academic achievement, made the learning experience more enjoyable, and improved their use of mobile devices. Additionally, there is no statistically significant relationship between the students' perception of using mobile phones in the learning process and their academic specialization and their academic achievement. Upon the results of the study, the researchers recommend implementing m-learning in the educational process effectively and conducting future studies to measure the impact of courses' content design and educational programs using smartphone applications.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Najwa F. Saleh specializes in goal-oriented curricula and teaching methods with 19+ years of progressive professional experience in university teaching. She obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education in 2005. Dr. Saleh has initiated innovative extra-curriculum activities and events to expand learning and practice opportunities. She contributed to the development of academic programs, and assessment tools and built a reputation for training kindergarten teachers on the use of active learning. Dr. Saleh published dozens of scientific research articles in scientific and educational international journals and participated in several scientific educational conferences. She authored many books in the field of child education. Mahmoud O. Jalambo +17 years of experience in English language teaching and training. Recently he is a Research Associate for the University of Glasgow through the Project of Culture for Sustainable and Inclusive Peace (CUSP). Also, he is a certified international online Tot from the UK, a certified trainer for IELTS, and a certified trainer for the Professional Certificate of English Language Teaching (PCELT) with the American School of International Training (SIT). He is a certified English for Freelancers ToT with the British Council. He has been teaching several ESP courses including English for Technology and Technology for English, and published a Scopus article about the integration of ICT in EFL/ESL teachers' training and self-efficacy beliefs, besides a book chapter to investigate the role of Artificial Intelligence in business. Mr. Jalambo won the prize of DigiEduHack for Palestine event in 2020. His key research interests include e-learning, English for freelancers, gender, and Effective Planning for better learning.

Introduction
Rapid technological advances have been greatly influencing contemporary educational settings (Foutsitzi & Caridakis, 2019) with new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) changing the teaching and learning approaches (Bindu, 2016). According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU; 2020), about 53% of the world's population (four billion people) utilizes the Internet. This led to an increased application of e-Learning to support the pedagogical process (Valverde-Berrocoso et al., 2020). Another technological advancement that has been influencing education is the exponential penetration of mobile phone usage. Mobile and smartphones have been immensely popular among different user segments including learners at all academic levels (Marta & Antoni, 2016). Using mobile phones in educational settings has made Mobile Learning (M-Learning) a fashionable facilitator of teaching and learning (Crompton & Burke, 2018). M-learning provides several benefits including supporting learning from any place and at any time. Personalized learning can be offered to students that they can work on at their pace. It is worth mentioning that Ofori and Lockee (2021) stated that access to m-learning opportunities has become widespread and continues to proliferate as a means of educational continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on education globally because it has been imposing substantial challenges on schools and higher education institutions. According to the United Nations Educational, S. and C. O. (UNESCO; 2020)), about one billion students worldwide have been staying at home for weeks due to measures tackling COVID-19. During this quarantine time e-learning has served as the solution for the ongoing learning process (Mahyoob, 2020 andKhan et al., 2021). This led to digital education becoming an inevitability to maintain the continuity of the educational process. Educational institutions have been urgently planning and facilitating e-learning and m-learning capabilities to keep their students engaged and progressing within the educational process. Even though Covid-19 has compelled formal institutions to adopt e-learning, maintaining social distance is of utmost value (Siddiquei & Kathpal, 2021). Teachers and students are in the process of adapting to this new teaching and learning mode as this e-learning wave is newly merged and entirely imposed, (Khan et al., 2021;Hodges et al., 2020in Affouneh et al., 2020. The m-learning was employed to continue the educational process after the decision of the Palestinian Ministry of Education to close universities and colleges due to the pandemic. Eventually, the education process became electronic and stipulated the need to utilize m-learning to attend lectures, to deliver assignments, tasks, quizzes, and mid-and final exams without exposing themselves to the risk of infection with the virus. The E-Learning unit at the University College of Applied Sciences UCAS has prepared a set of specialized training for teachers and students on how to use many programs and applications. Instructors, as well as students, have confronted major obstacles as a result of the overnight shift from a brick-andmortar to a click-and-learn style of education and learning (Affouneh et al., 2020, Farrah & Al-Bakry, 2020Adnan & Kjos, 2020;Bdair, 2021).
Despite the advantageous characteristics of m-learning, its effectiveness to support the educational process can be limited. To understand the challenges of deploying m-learning as the principal facilitation channel in education, capturing and analyzing students' perspectives is crucial. To the best of the researcher's knowledge, no similar studies before and during the pandemic depict the students' perceptions towards using smartphones in the educational process in the Palestinian context and at the university level in particular. Except Alsswey and Al-Samarraie (2019) within the context of Gulf Countries who mentioned that Arab countries, like other developing countries, are encountering challenges linked to the acceptance and adoption of m-learning. Therefore, it is vital to examine the factors driving the adoption of m-learning among instructors and students. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, teaching and learning have been forced to move fully to the Internet rather than the conventional offline medium. In this respect, Saikat et al. (2021) explained that the use of M-learning has risen dramatically, which was either expected or anticipated, They added that the challenges and benefits of such widespread usage are beginning to emerge in front us, thus, the benefits and challenges of leveraging m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic should be investigated.
Therefore, the findings of this study can be a reference for UCAS policymakers as well as other university officials in determining and using m-learning during COVID-19 or similar crises to improve online learning in Palestinian higher education. The main research question that has been answered is "what is the female students' perception concerning the use of mobile phones in education during the COVID-19 Pandemic?", aiming at achieving the following objectives: • Investigating the importance of using m-Learning within the education process from the UCAS female students' perspective during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Investigating the existence of statistically significant differences among the UCAS female students' perception of using mobile phones in education during the COVID-19 Pandemic, attributed to the variable of the students' specialization of study and their academic achievement.
Thus, the current study was applied in the second semester of April 2020, to investigate female students' perception of using m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in the educational activities within the Palestinian context. It is worth mentioning that the selected specializations in the current study are only open for female enrolment, namely Child Education at the Department of Educational Sciences and Midwifery at the Department of Nursing and Health Sciences. Thus, the study attempted to examine how the UCAS female students perceive the use of mobile phones during COVID-19 on their academic achievement.

Literature review
According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2020), the number of active mobilebroadband subscriptions worldwide per 100 inhabitants was 83 in 2019 with an 18.4% annual growth. This pervasive use of Internet-connected mobile phones and its exponential increase has widely facilitated the use of m-Learning in education. The following subsections review the literature on mobile learning and the use of m-learning during the lockdown imposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

M-learning in the educational process
Several views of m-learning have been discussed in the literature. Polsani (2003) considers m-learning as a form of education that is produced, disseminated, and consumed through a network. Feser (2010) sees m-learning as mainly the use of mobile technology to support learning helpful information at a specific time and context. Many characteristics have been associated with m-learning such as private and interactive (Ozdamli & Cavus, 2011). M-Learning is transforming conventional education constrained by time and place to a whensoever, wheresoever educational setting (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2009). It also supports collaborative learning activities among educators and/or peers (Chen et al. (2013). M-learning can be blended with traditional learning by combining face-to-face with online interactions.
Researchers have investigated various models to examine the adaptation and perception of m-learning. Sarrab et al. (2016) emphasized the need to develop strategic plans and guidelines that consider learners' perception of m-learning to fully understand the factors that lead to sustainable m-learning contexts. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been wielded to measure learners' acceptance of applying m-learning (Gómez-Ramirez et al., 2019) and examined students' attitudes, intents and behaviors related to the usage of mobile phones to implement learning activities. Yeap et al. (2016) applied an m-learning readiness model established on the Theory Planned Behaviour to investigate factors that drive m-learning adaptation among undergraduate students. They discovered that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavior control affect learners' intention to adopt m-learning. Raza et al. (2017) investigated the behavioural and psychosocial factors of higher education students that impact their perception of m-learning. They based their analysis on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and TAM. The study's findings indicate that attitudinal beliefs and subjective norms have positive impact on m-learning adoption. It was also determined that students' greater familiarity of the mobile device affects their intentions to adopt m-learning.
The smartphone has become an integral part of the education landscape. In this regard, Aremu and Adeoluwa (2021) assessed the students' learning attitude and academic performance at the College of Education, Ikere Ekiti, Nigeria through m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they proved the effectiveness of m-learning in improving the performance of students besides the positive attitudes that students have towards m-learning. Therefore, they suggest that m-learning should be integrated into the school curriculum. Additionally, Çavuş (2020) confirmed that the m-learning system was deemed to be useful for instructors and students for the future, as he proved that m-learning is oriented to anyone who may have an interest in mobile technologies, and all higher education institutes. Wong et al. (2021) investigated the gender differences in m-learning among Malaysian university students and established a noticeable correlation between M-learning modes and gender. In regards, the concepts of M-Learning must be taken into account when developing online learning syllabuses in order to facilitate learning. They recommended the university lecturers provide consideration for gender differences in the preference toward m-learning practice.
Within the context of Palestine as occupied territories, m-learning was considered necessary, even prior to the scenario imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic on a global scale. M-learning was and is still deemed significant to resolve issues about the unstable geopolitical situation of Palestine, which would hinder students' reach to schools and higher education institutions. Therefore, m-learning would solve such issues and make schooling possible in times of struggle. However, it should be clear as well that not only the political conflict would be considered as a limitation to m-learning in Palestine, but also the lack of communication infrastructure related to internet accessibility, as Shraim and Crompton (2015) stated in their research. In other words, access to education and technology within the context of Palestine might be denied due to many factors such as; repeated wars, and cut-off of electricity, poverty, and recently the lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic that hinders affording smartphones to students. Despite such limitations, still, both learners and teachers have positive attitudes toward using smartphones in the educational process; as it provides them some change from the traditional methods of instruction (Shaqour, 2014). Besides, another case study revealed that UCAS students have positive attitudes toward using smartphones in learning English as a second language. Despite the fact that 30% of the respondents do not have smartphones, the rest who have them, do not know how to exploit their phones for educational functions, but they would like to use them for educational purposes (Barakat, 2015).

COVID-19 as a driving force for m-learning
Although the COVID-19 pandemic is relatively recent, its severe negative impact on traditional educational settings has prompted researchers to consider unorthodox methods to ensure the continuation of the educational processes. Naciri et al. (2020) argued that m-learning is an unavoidable alternative to adopt for higher education. Verawardina et al. (2020) emphasize the need to prepare and define clearly the role of teachers and students when widely applying online learning to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Biswas et al. (2020) investigated university students' perception of using mobile learning in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings of the research indicated that most students have a positive image of m-learning as an effective way to overcome the education gap during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in the context of Palestine, a few studies focused on higher education under the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the studies spotlighted the transition to online learning at the kindergarten level and its influence on both the learners, their teachers and their families (Ayoub et al., 2020). The research called on the government to regulate the online learning process and to issue policies that would suit the new global trend of education during the pandemic time. On the other hand, Saputra et al. (2021) investigated the students' perceptions of online learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia to reveal that the students perceive online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic as (1) ineffective learning activities; (2) unpleasant learning activities; (3) limiting self-actualization in education; (4) helping to become an independent person in learning; and (5) fun learning activities. Accordingly, Higher Education should create innovative and creative online learning strategies. Thus, students have a high enthusiasm for online learning.
Afore the implementation of m-learning, UCAS conducted a quick training for the staff on the techniques of creating Google classrooms, designing online quizzes and assignments, etc. Meanwhile, recorded short videos were published to the UCAS students about how to join the classrooms, interact with their lectures and submit assignments. Using smartphones in the educational process in this study was utilized to examine the lectures sent by academic staff, answer the required assignments and tasks, take exams and quizzes, participate in electronic competitions by using web tools, prepare PowerPoint presentations, and use some applications to prepare the required tasks from the assigned videos.

Study problem and objectives
Despite the advantageous characteristics of m-learning, its effectiveness to support the educational process can be limited. To understand the challenges of deploying m-learning as the principal facilitation channel in education, capturing and analyzing students' perspectives is crucial. To the best of the researcher's knowledge, no similar studies before and during the pandemic depict the students' perceptions towards using smartphones in the educational process in the Palestinian context and at the university level in particular. Following the COVID-19 outbreak, teaching and learning have been forced to move fully to the Internet rather than the conventional offline medium. In this respect, Saikat et al. (2021) explained that the use of M-learning has risen dramatically, which was either expected or anticipated. They added that the challenges and benefits of such widespread usage are beginning to emerge in front us, thus, the benefits and challenges of leveraging m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic should be investigated. Therefore, the findings of this study can be a reference for UCAS policymakers as well as other university officials in determining and using m-learning during COVID-19 or similar crises to improve online learning in Palestinian higher education.
The main research question is "what is the female students' perception concerning the use of mobile phones in education during the COVID-19 Pandemic?" by answering this question, the following objectives are met: • Investigating the importance of using m-Learning within the education process from the UCAS female students' perspective during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Investigating the existence of statistically significant differences among the UCAS female students' perception of using mobile phones in education during the COVID-19 Pandemic, attributed to the variable of the students' specialization of study and their academic achievement.

Methodology of the study
The research followed the quantitative descriptive analytical approach to investigate the students' perception of using mobile phones for educational purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patten (2017) explains that the descriptive analytical approach is the process of using current data to identify trends and relationships, therefore it is especially useful for communicating change over time and uses trends as a springboard for further analysis to drive decision-making. It is worth mentioning that Saikat et al. (2021) revealed the strengths and shortcomings that would aid in adjusting the relevant policies administered by the institutions. Furthermore, the university management should comprehend the expected features that should be included in novel m-learning platforms. Also, based on the long experience of the authors of this research, as university professors, it is anticipated that the UCAS female students positively perceive m-learning despite their level and achievement of study.
Based on the argument of the previous studies as well as the authors' academic experience, the hypotheses of the current study were formulated as follows: (1) There are no statistically significant differences at the level of (α ≤ 0.05) between the average perception of the UCAS female students to use mobile phones for educational purposes during the Coronavirus pandemic, attributed to the students' specialization of study.
(2) There are no statistically significant differences at the level of (α ≤ 0.05) between the average perception of the UCAS female students to use mobile phones for educational purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic, attributed to the students' academic achievement.

Study population and sample
According to the statistics of the Admission and Registration Office at UCAS, the study population was purposefully chosen to include (172) female students which includes all the UCAS female students enrolled in the departments of Child Education and Midwifery during the second semester of the academic year 2020-2021, in which online learning was imposed after the lockdown was declared due to the COVID-19 pandemic. BOZKURT and ERDOGAN (2022) determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the gender variable and the attitude scale towards e-learning, so the current research is tackling only females' perceptions towards m-learning. In this regard, (156) female students responded to the questionnaire of this study i.e. (48) students from the Midwifery Department, and (108) from the Child Education Department. Thus the response rate was approximately 90.7% of the total study population. As Wong et al. (2021) reported noticeable correlations between M-learning and gender on academic achievement. They recommend that the gender factor must be taken into account when developing m-Learning syllabuses to facilitate learning. Accordingly, the female students were tackled only in this study, due to the UCAS policy that allows only female students to study in the investigated specializations (Child Education and Midwifery departments) because of the nature of those specializations in the context of the conservative society of the Gaza Strip.
The distribution of the purposeful study sample according to their specialization of study and academic achievement is shown in Tables 1 and 2 below respectively, as shown below: The participants pledged that their answers to the study tool would be confidential and would only be used for scientific research purposes. So, the participants were also not asked to register their names or any information indicating their identity. The respondents were willing to answer the questionnaire of the study voluntarily and without being paid because they believe that such studies contribute to enhancing the teaching-learning process at UCAS.

Study instrument
When the study was conducted, it was in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic circumstance; therefore, the researcher did not find a proper questionnaire that would suit the exact context and nature of the study. Thus, the researchers of the current study have designed a questionnaire to achieve the study objectives. The questionnaire was built and developed in light of the previous studies and the long academic experience of the authors in terms of education and e-learning. It is worth mentioning that the designed questionnaire was used specifically for this study to suit the situation in the UCAS context, so it was drafted and presented to a panel of referees to check its validity by deleting, modifying, and adding more items to the suggested version of the tool.
Considering the referees' comments and feedback, the questionnaire included two main parts. The first part of the questionnaire includes the biographic data of the respondent including the specialization of study for the UCAS female students and their academic achievement, while the second part includes 21 items utilizing a five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was designed to answer the study's questions by measuring students' perception of using m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and how m-learning was influenced by their specialization of study and academic achievement.

Questionnaire validity analysis
As the validity of a questionnaire is concerned with evaluating how the questionnaire items measure what they are intended for, the internal consistency of the questionnaire was measured and how each item is consistent with its domain was checked. The relevance coefficient between each item and the overall questionnaire score is shown in Table 3, so it is seen that the relevance coefficients are significant at α = 0.05. This implies the questionnaire's validity in what it is intended to measure.

Questionnaire reliability analysis
To ensure that the questionnaire gives the same result if redistributed more than one time under the same circumstances and conditions, the reliability of this questionnaire was checked using the Split-Half method. The questionnaire items were divided into two groups: odd-numbered items and even-numbered items. The correlation coefficient between the odd and even item scores was calculated, which was then corrected using the spearman-Brown formula. The modified correlation coefficient is equal to 2 r/1 + r (where is the correlation coefficient between the odd and even item scores). The calculated correlation coefficient before modification was 0.812 and after being modified was 0.829. It is observed that the modified correlation coefficient is acceptable and statistically significant. Also, the Alpha Cronbach analysis was used to investigate the questionnaire reliability. This resulted in a high value of 0.845 for all the questionnaire's items. This confirms the reliability of the questionnaire and its validity to collect data and analyze it to test the hypotheses and answer the questions of the current study.

Ethical procedures
To protect the participants' privacy, before distributing the questionnaires, the researchers informed the participants of the main goal of the study and the subject that it addresses. Thus,  the female students were aware that they are voluntarily participating in this study, besides they were informed that all their responses gathered through this questionnaire will be anonymous and used only for this research. Also, the participants were reminded that they have the right to not complete any particular items in the questionnaire and to withdraw at any point during the study.

Results and discussion
To evaluate the perception of the UCAS female students towards the use of m-learning, the means and relative weight of each item in the second part of the questionnaire were calculated, as shown in Table 4 below:

Answering the study questions
Question 1: What is the perception of UCAS female students towards using mobile phones in education during the COVID-19 pandemic?
In Table 5, the average, standard deviation and relative weight of students' responses are listed. The statistics presented in Table 5 imply a positive perception among the respondents towards using mobile m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the relative weight of the students' responses ranges from %65.90 and %83.85 which was respectively to item number 6 i.e. "I prefer to spend more learning time using the mobile phone" and item number 8 i.e. "I think that using the mobile phone in education improves my use of electronic devices". This result goes in line with Crompton and Burke (2018), Çavuş (2020), and Shaqour (2014), and Aremu and Adeoluwa (2021) who determined that M-learning has excellent potential to be an effective platform for education, besides proving the effectiveness of m-learning in improving the students' performance and the positive attitudes that students have towards m-learning in higher education institutions. This result goes in line with Barakat (2015) who revealed that students like to use smartphones for educational purposes.
The researchers attribute this result to the fact that 21st-century students are very passionate about modern technology, possess smartphones, and constantly use mobile applications in various   areas of life in general and in the field of learning in particular. The researchers also attribute this conclusion to the nature of mobile phones which provides them with attractive and interesting educational content and affords learning opportunities and access to information and data easily without being restricted to time or place, so it meets the needs of students faster and easier, which led to increased opportunities to join distance learning and increase opportunities for interaction and communication between students with each other as well as with their teachers. Thus, the researchers believe that the new generations of students might accept and prefer using their smartphone mobiles in the educational process since they increase their response to learning and the formation of positive perception towards learning using.
Accordingly, It can be concluded that the perception of the UCAS female students' toward m-learning is positive, as shown in Table 5 below: Question 2: Are there statistically significant differences between the average perception of UCAS female students towards using mobile phones for educational purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic, attributed to the variables of specialization of study and academic achievement?
Using the One-Way ANOVA test, the null hypothesis H 0 was tested and compared to the alternative hypothesis H 1 . Table 6 shows the One-Way ANOVA coefficient to determine statistically significant differences attributed to the specialization of study and academic achievement variables. It is seen in Table 6 that the F-value is lower than F-statistic, i.e., there are no statistically significant differences between the average of the UCAS female students towards using mobile phones for educational purposes during the coronavirus pandemic attributed to the specialization of study and the academic achievement variables. Thus the null hypothesis H 0 was accepted. This result goes in line with the findings of ElAdl and Musawi (2020) who showed generally a positive significant correlation between students' attitudes towards learning and academic achievement. Also, it agrees with Torun (2020) perception of learning and academic achievement. Also, it agrees with Torun (2020), Raza et al. (2017), and Al Musawi and Ammar (2021) who indicated that motivation toward e-learning was found to be a predictor of academic achievement. On the other hand, the specialization variable insignificance is supported by Özaydin Özkara and Ibili (2021) show that students' attitudes towards e-learning differ in the way of learning, but not in the academic major. The researchers attribute this result to the fact that most UCAS students, irrespective of the specialization of study and their academic achievement, have been already  using mobile phones during the pandemic as part of the online teaching and learning arrangement by the UCAS Online Unit as a natural result to the procedures and instructions announced by the UCAS and followed during the first semester of the academic year 2020/2021, through which the lockdown was imposed and all the universities in Gaza were closed to shift to the e-learning.

Conclusion
The results discussed in the previous section indicated a positive perception among the UCAS female students towards using m-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. as the majority of the participants prefer using their mobiles in the learning process. There is no statistically significant between the UCAS female perception in terms of m-learning and their specialization as well as their level of academic achievement. The study provides an initial positive perception of m-learning among the university students within the context of the Gaza Strip, since the students in this particular study considered m-learning as a fun and easy experience. In addition, the UCAS female students felt that this experience of m-learning added to their personal and soft skills and enhanced besides enhancing their academic achievement. This can be employed as a basis for further research on the factors, strategies and guidelines that should be followed and considered while implementing m-learning in higher educational institutions as an effective and acceptable alternative to traditional education settings.

Limitations and recommendations
This research has limitations, namely that it only involves respondents from the University College of Applied Sciences among the other Palestinian universities in the Gaza Strip, One of the difficulties the researchers faced due to the time constrain as well as the lockdown of the pandemic, thus, it was challenging to access a larger community to include a larger sample of other local universities or include the gender variable to investigate the perception of UCAS students towards m-learning, so it only involves respondents from the UCAS and more specifically UCAS female students in two specializations i.e. Child Education and Midwifery. Thus, the research results may not be able to reach a broader range of respondents in Palestine. Besides, this conducting interviews with the participants was also challenging, so the current study has limitations in that it only used quantitative data, in which data is obtained through a questionnaire.
Based on the findings, the researcher and the limitations of the study, the researchers made the following recommendations that would benefit other researchers either in the Palestinian context or in other similar conditions to Palestine as long as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to influence education: • Teaching and learning modules should be redesigned to suit the use of m-learning in terms of its instruction and evaluation. since some learning materials are not supported by the mobile features to be friendly readable and accessible by the learners.
• There are difficulties facing the students as well as the academic students and staff in higher education institutions related to m-learning that such as poverty that hinders them to possess smartphones and the lack of electricity or internet access from their homes due to the special circumstances Palestinian face in the Gaza Strip. Thus, such challenges need to be investigated to provide solutions.
• Capacity-building training programs and courses, in m-learning strategies, should be offered to educators to be in line with all recent technologies and the tetchiness of m-learning.
• University students should be addressed in training or awareness sessions about the new technologies in m-learning, in terms of their use and how to handle its challenges.
• Future studies are recommended to identify male and female UCAS students' perceptions of m-learning and to tackle other university students' perceptions in various Arab countries. They might also need because such comparative studies could motivate the other Arab countries to adopt or adapt what other contexts find effective due to the common characteristics that the Arab societies may share. Further studies might also be conducted to anticipate challenges and obstacles encountered by university students and faculty members in m-learning. Additionally, to prepare suitable interventions and solutions. Finally other sources of data could be used in future research including qualitative data obtained from interviews to verify the quantitative data collected through questionnaires.