Opportunities and Challenges of M-Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed Methodology Approach

Introduction

At this point in time when the pandemic crisis has taken over the globe, affected 1.2 billion students who were outside the classroom in 186 countries (Li and Lalani, 2020) technology has been nothing but a blessing to everyday functioning of life. Technological development and the internet have changed the lives of people immensely and have also brought a huge change in various fields.

Mobile learning, also known as M-learning, is a new way to access learning content using mobile devices in different parts of the world (Al-Jenaibi and AlKandari, 2021). It’s possible to learn whenever and wherever learners want, as long as they have a modern mobile device connected to the Internet. The millennial generation has grown up with digital devices in various sectors successfully such as emerging digital banking (Bhasin and Rajesh, 2021). So, mobile learning is tailored to the way millennials work and think with emerging technologies in education such as language learning (Al-Hasan, 2021). But there are so many advantages with M-learning that all generations can benefit from it. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of M-learning. The mediums of E-learning and principles of artificial intelligence are gradually gaining popularity in the world with popular web applications (Soni, 2021; Suguna Mallika S. and Rajya Lakshmi D., 2021). Mobile learning also covers the delivery and support of learning using mobile ‘phones and in the last five years, mobile phones have progressively assumed a place in further and higher education is the USA, the far east and pacific rim, and the UK, supporting distance learners and part-time students. There has also been a growing understanding of mobile ‘phones’ potential for supporting learning or assessment, even though recent scholarly article made it questionable (Tuah, 2020). As a result, there is a gap of analyzing the real challenges faced by the students in m-learning and grab the advanced opportunities in using m-learning in terms of any emergency situation such as market turbulence (Morreale, Thorpe, and Westwick, 2021; Lacka, Wong, and Haddoud, 2021).

Governments and education ministry of different nations have undertaken strong measures and specific policies to implement certain software and applications that drive the flow of education during pandemic. The ministry has also collaborated with Georgian Public Broadcaster and has started an educational programme named - 'Teleskola' or TV school to ensure better understanding of class lessons.