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1. Introduction
An improvement in mobile technology and the increasingly rapid proliferation of mobile devices, for instance, tablets and smartphones, are changing the learning process across the borders. A new form of learning called mobile learning (M-learning) has emerged (Bernacki et al., 2020). Mobile devices can be utilized to access a variety of information anywhere and anytime. This aspect offers students greater convenience and flexibility in accessing electronic resources, allowing them to learn independently of location and time (Hamidi and Chavoshi, 2018). Besides, the adoption of mobile social networking sites is stated to be served as a platform to facilitate sharing of knowledge, personal learning, enhancing educational practices, experiences and student engagement (Wong et al., 2015). M-learning has become an umbrella term for the integration of mobile computing devices within learning and teaching (Bai et al., 2020; Grant, 2019). Nowadays, it plays a significant role in formal education, and university and college students are increasingly using mobile devices in or outside the classroom (Gan et al., 2017; Pinto et al., 2019). For example, Lin et al. (2020) found that about 70% of students in China use smartphones for a variety of academics, including reading e-books and accessing library catalogs. Crompton and Burke (2018) found that 74% were undergraduate students and 54% took place in a formal education context. Thus, scholars have recently highlighted the importance of M-learning acceptance and use of applications in the context of higher education (Sitar-Taut and Mican, 2021; Yip et al., 2021). Prior studies argued that M-learning offers a number of benefits, such as enhancing learners' skills, providing opportunities to learn new things, enriching the learning experience, facilitating information sharing and communication, offering study helps to learners enhance confidence and learners' achievements and reducing cost (Crompton and Burke, 2018; Gureyev et al., 2020; Hamidi and Chavoshi, 2018; Reychav et al., 2015; Tan et al., 2014).
China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reported that by June 2019 number of the Internet users would reach 847 million, which is 99.1% of the total number of Internet users (CNNIC, 2019). Keeping in view the above facts and in practice, many colleges and universities have launched different M-learning applications to support and enhance M-learning activities, including...