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In this research, a GAmified Mobile Leaning Framework (GAMOLEAF) developed as a new intelligent application designed for mobile devices to ensure learning, assessing, and advancing learners' knowledge in programming complex data structures in Java programming language. GAMOLEAF adopted motivational strategies to solve motivational problems during the COVID-19 pandemic by employing a gamification module, that integrates levels, scores, badges, leaderboard, and feedback. Furthermore, in order to assist learners to find useful and relevant lessons and best solutions for each data structure, GAMOLEAF incorporated personalized recommendations through two intelligent modules: a Lessons Recommendation Module (LRecM) and a problem-solving Solutions Recommender Module (PSSORecM). LrecM aims to provide learners with personalized lessons depending on the ratings collected explicitly from them. Whereas, PSSORecM bases on learners' behaviors and directs them to consult other solutions. Both modules were based on the collaborative filtering method and used Matrix Factorization (MF) applying Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) algorithms, respectively. To explore how the integration of personalized recommendations and gamification impact on students motivation and learning achievements in higher education to learning programming complex data structures course using mobile technologies, especially in difficult times like COVID-19, an experiment was carried out to compare the learning achievement and motivation of 90 students divided into three groups (control group, first experimental group, and second experimental group) using three versions of GAMOLEAF respectively: GAMOLEAF-V1 without gamification and without recommendation, GAMOLEAF-V2 integrating gamification only and GAMOLEAF-V3 integrating both gamification and recommendation. The One-way ANOVA (analysis of variance) test and Post hoc Tukey test were employed to analyze the performances of the three groups before and after the learning activity. The results suggested that the students who learned with GAMOLEAF-V3 using gamification and recommendation achieved significantly better learning achievement than those who learned with GAMOLEAF-V2 and GAMOLEAF-V1. From the experimental results, it was found that the gamification applied in GAMOLEAF-V2 and GAMOLEAF-V3 had significantly better effectiveness in improving only students' motivation without improving their learning achievement. Moreover, the analysis result of the learning achievement indicated that the students in the second experimental group showed significantly higher learning achievement using GAMOLEAF-V3 in comparison with those in both the control group and the first experimental group who used GAMOLEAF-V1 and GAMOLEAF-V2 respectively. Such findings indicate that the personalized recommendations offered by the Lessons Recommendation Module (LRecM) and the problem-solving Solutions Recommender Module (PSSORecM) in GAMOLEAF-V3 may be one of the reasons why the learning achievement of students was increased.