The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organizations in the world to fully utilize variety of emerging online communication platform technologies. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are among these organizations that obliged students and instructors to use different online communication platforms to insure uninterrupted education process. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated many considerable challenges for the global higher education community while using such emerging technologies. The purpose of this study is to analyze university student’s perceptions on the challenges and hurdles they face during the Covid-19 pandemic when they use IT platform applications for online learning activities. This research used mixed methods research with main emphasis on qualitative research, supported by literature content analysis techniques. The data set for this study was collected during peak time of pandemic period between 16^th of May 2020 to 5^th of Jun 2020. Based on the descriptive analysis using SPSS and the analyzed results using NVivo12 for the data that was collected from 486 students from different universities in Malaysia, students disclosed various obstacles they encounter when they use IT platform applications for online learning. These obstacles are summarized as follows: (1) Work and information overload received from instructors through online learning platforms (2) Technical challenges related to students’ lack of affordability for having online learning support facilities (3) Personal health challenges related to stress and anxiety problems.

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In parallel and distributed computing environment such as "The Grid", anticipating the behavior of the resources and tasks based on certain scheduling algorithm is a great challenging. Thus, studying and improving these types of environments becomes very difficult. Out of this, the developers have spent remarkable efforts to come up with simulators which facilitate the studies in this domain. In addition, these simulators have a significant role in enhancing and proposing many scheduling algorithms, and this in turn has reflected efficiently on the Grid. In this paper, we will present some of these tools, which are: GridSim for large scales distributed computing and parallel environment, Alea for tackling dynamic scheduling problems, Sim-G-Batch grid simulator for simulating the security and energy concept and Balls simulator for evaluation peer-to-peer with integrated load balancing algorithm. Furthermore, this paper aims to guide and assist the researcher to choose the proper tool that can fit the studied research area, by providing functionality analysis for the reviewed simulators..

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