M-learning in the COVID-19 era: physical vs digital class

Emerging technologies, such as the development of the Internet of Things and the transition to smart cities, and innovative handheld devices have led to big changes in many aspects of our lives, while more changes were imminent. Education is also a sector that has undergone huge changes due to the spreading of those devices. Even at the era of feature phones, it started to become clear that portable devices with access to the internet can be used for learning. The process of learning with the use of mobile phones was then in an early stage, due to the limitations of feature phones. Whereas, with the introduction of smartphones, education is expected to be drastically altered in the future, in most parts of the world. New, radical, and controversial in some cases, approaches have been developed, over the past years, in an effort to implement a mobile learning process in real life conditions. Intelligent tutoring systems have had rapid growth, especially in the COVID-19 era, while a significant increase in online courses via social networks has also been noted. This paper focuses on presenting the most important research parameters of m-learning during the last decade, while it also incorporates a novel empirical study in the domain. The utilization of educational data has been taken into consideration and is presented, aiming at ways to improve human interaction in the digital classroom.