Mobile Cloud Computing: Academic Services for Palestinian Higher Education Institutions
Samy S. Abu-Naser, Mahmoud M. Abu Ghosh, Rasha Ragheb Atallah · 2015
Recently, Many Palestinian higher education institutions had a successful experience in utilizing e-Services and e-learning. Most of University services are currently applied as an electronic application web. Services such as lecture schedule, exams schedule, viewing the academic information, grades report, library services, Email services, eLearning services, News and Announcements, but these services are only supported by web based applications or desktop application which restrict the access of the users using computers or laptops. Users need to access the University services anytime and anywhere as mobile services, so in this paper we present a system called Mobile Cloud Computing Academic Services at Palestinian Higher Education Institutions (MCCAS) which is a mobile application to facilities access. MCCAS serve the students and the lecturers of Palestinian higher education institutions. According to a study we have done, there is a strong evidence on the readiness of academic staff and students to accept and use Academic Services on Mobile in their education environment. Also most institutions of higher education in Palestine have a suitable infrastructure, as wireless network or Wi-Fi. The study shown that students had an adequate knowledge and awareness to use technology in their education environment. Furthermore, this will support the utilization of technology in Palestinian higher education institutions. Agile methodology was adapted to develop MCCAS application. It incorporates the SDLC phases starting from the Planning, analysis, design, implementation, test and evaluation up to the Maintenance phase in each iteration. The evaluation was conducted on 220 students and 51 person from the academic staff at 8 universities from Gaza strip and west Bank, to determine users’ perception on MCCAS to measure the usability, ease of use, satisfaction. Also the results showed that MCCAS success in helping the users doing their transactions successfully and accurately any time anywhere. It is hoped that the result of this study will encourage the universities to engage MCCAS in their services. The system is evaluated by using SPSS T-independent test, Cronbach alpha and average method, the system's acceptance was 90.05%.