INTRODUCTION

Learner autonomy and students’ engagement in virtual learning spaces have become inseparable concerns in contemporary higher education, particularly in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts where learner autonomy has long been positioned as a cornerstone and even an ultimate goal of language education (Benson, 2011; Dang, 2010). In this view, learner autonomy is not a vague ideal but a capacity that enables learners to participate actively in learning activities (Benson, 2007a) and to exercise greater control over their learning space (Dang & Le, 2022). Importantly, the construct is multifaceted and enacted through three interdependent processes, namely initiating, monitoring, and evaluating learning. This allows learners to learn how to set directions, regulate activity and resources, and critically assess progress as part of a continuous cycle (Dang, 2012; Little, 2003). Virtual learning spaces intensify both the opportunities and the demands of this cycle as technology can expand access, personalisation, and feedback loops. However, learner autonomy does not automatically emerge from access alone. Without deliberate pedagogical design and guidance, learners may struggle to integrate digital resources into meaningful learning routines (Little, 2004; Benson, 2007b; Reinders, 2010). Current accounts of classroom life further underline that engagement in digital environments can shift toward transactional, product-oriented participation such as seeking immediate AI-generated answers. They thereby bypass reflection, analysis, and collaboration and ultimately weaken the capacities of initiating, monitoring, and evaluating that define learner autonomy (Little, 1991; Vygotsky, 1986). These perspectives foreground a central implication for virtual learning spaces, confirming that sustained student engagement is educationally valuable precisely when it is tied to learners’ agentive control over learning processes, rather than mere completion of tasks or consumption of outputs (Dang, 2025a; Dang, 2025b).

Reprinting the four articles in this issue is therefore warranted on scholarly, practical, and archival grounds. First, their themes of learner autonomy, engagement with technology-mediated learning environments, and teachers’ pedagogical thinking remain structurally important to English language education in higher education, especially given the persistent emphasis on learner autonomy as a driver of participation, motivation, and quality learning outcomes (e.g., Benson, 2007b; Dang, 2012). Second, the decision to reprint responds to a material problem. These works have not been archived reliably due to the cessation of two journals, losses of legacy materials, and successive changes in management systems. In the earlier periods of 2010s, archiving practices were uneven. DOI assignment was not yet routine, and indexing coverage was limited, creating practical barriers to sustained access even when scholarship remained influential. Third, the ongoing citation of these articles, despite their initial publication dates in 2010 and 2012, signals enduring value. Readers and researchers have continued to find the analyses and conceptual tools useful for interpreting how learner autonomy and engagement are shaped when language learning moves into technology-supported spaces, and when teachers and students negotiate what it means to learn well under changing conditions (Dang, 2025a; Dang, 2025b).

OVERVIEW OF THE REPRINTED ARTICLES

The four reprinted pieces offer a coherent account of how learner autonomy and online engagement can be understood, observed, and fostered in Vietnamese higher education, especially within English language education and technology-mediated learning environments. Two articles foreground students’ participation and meaning-making in a Moodle-based Web 2.0 space, identifying differentiated participation orientations and the pedagogical consequences of those differences. Another article extends the empirical focus by explicitly positioning teachers’ perceptions, institutional constraints, and socio-cultural conditions as mediators of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) uptake, while still tracing patterned student participation and proposing context-attuned implementation guidance. Complementing these situated studies, the last article offers a synthesized theoretical overview of learner autonomy, including its definitional plurality, four-perspective framing, and major models. It then ends with a call to conceptualise autonomy as socially shaped and to examine it through interactions between personal attributes and contextual contributions. These articles collectively justify why learner autonomy and virtual engagement cannot be reduced to “technology effects” alone. The design features, task structures, social relations, and locally grounded teacher facilitation jointly shape what students actually do online.

The first article, titled Pedagogical lessons from students’ participation in Web 2.0, investigates Vietnamese undergraduate English linguistics majors’ responses to integrating a Moodle site during a course, using students’ attitudes and participation in an online Web 2.0 environment as the basis for analysis. Interview data range from neutral to very positive. The central analytical contribution is the identification of three patterns of online participation, namely task-oriented, content-oriented, and community-oriented. These patterns are interpreted as evidence of a transition in learners’ expectations and behaviours, including a growing tendency to control learning processes and to incorporate socialising into formal learning (Dang & Robertson, 2010a). A key nuance is that participation patterns are not rigid types. Students may display characteristics consistent with more than one pattern, and role shifts depend partly on the perceived quality and interest of the materials such as what counts as a good posting and why threads draw comments. The article also surfaces differentiated expectations of teacher presence. For example, more task-oriented participants appear less likely to expect extensive teacher commenting, while content- and community-oriented participants state stronger preferences for teacher engagement and feedback. On this basis, the paper closes with practical implications for technology integration aimed at enhancing engagement through (i) designing tasks so completion requires interaction, (ii) providing and potentially negotiating criteria for what counts toward assessment, (iii) leveraging offline relationships to strengthen online community (and vice versa), and (iv) calibrating teacher commenting to avoid inhibiting interaction while recognising individual differences. The conclusion explicitly ties these implications to longstanding principles of undergraduate learning design (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), while cautioning that the connection between school and home activities enabled by a Learning Management System (LMS) needs to be nurtured through assessment design and sensitivity to attitudes and expectations in a particular socio-cultural context (Dang & Robertson, 2010a).

The second article, titled E-behaviors and e-community formation: An investigation on Vietnamese EFL students, frames online learning as a platform for emergent online social life and communities. It is positioned within two decades of scholarship on online communication and shaped by shifts from unidirectional to interactive websites, asynchronous to synchronous exchanges, and stand alone to networked real-time simulations, the second article. It investigates Vietnamese EFL undergraduates’ habitual behaviours when interacting with a Moodle site in an English skills course, with particular attention to (i) students’ expectations and awareness of online communication, (ii) preferences related to instant messenger (IM) and blogging, and (iii) influences on online community formation (Dang & Robertson, 2010b). The study employs a qualitative approach, drawing on individual interviews and document analyses. The central finding is students’ preference for synchronous modes and “instant responses regardless of how often they go online,” signalling a strong orientation to immediacy and responsiveness in educational communication (Dang & Robertson, 2010b). In parallel, the article argues that educational online communities do not simply self-organise. Their shaping “needs a lot of support, reinforcement, and nurture from the facilitators and real-life connections” (Dang & Robertson, 2010b). This claim is also situated within broader accounts of networked communication in second language (L2) education, where local networked communication can increase opportunities for expression (Kern, 1995), engagement (Sullivan & Pratt, 1996), and oral proficiency (Payne & Whitney, 2002), and where tools such as blogs and IM have been linked to confidence and more successful L2 use (Hanna & de Nooy, 2003; Purushotma, 2005). The article concludes by proposing a possible analytical framework for investigating online learning communities. Importantly for the editorial framing of this reprint issue, it positions facilitator support and the online-offline nexus not as add-ons but as structural conditions for community-based learning in virtual spaces.

The third article, titled Responses to learning management system integration: Teachers’ perceptions, mediating factors, and student participation patterns, is explicitly located in the Vietnamese policy context of ICT uptake in education, noting the national encouragement and investment signalled by official policy instruments and the expectation that ICT infrastructure would be effectively employed across language programs in tertiary institutions. Working within an interpretive paradigm, the paper reports an exploratory study conducted during an EFL course in a public university in southern Vietnam, collecting responses from both lecturers and students to LMS employment during a course. The pedagogical rationale is tied to the seven good pedagogical principles for undergraduate education proposed by Chickering and Gamson (1987) and notes that these have been widely treated as applicable to online learning environments (e.g., Bailey & Card, 2009; Palloff & Pratt, 2005). In the findings, lecturers’ attitudes toward and actual employment of ICT are framed through three mediating factor groups, namely personal, institutional, and social. These mediators help explain variations in lecturers’ decisions, obligations, and risk perceptions around LMS uptake. Social factors include not only computer access constraints but also lecturers’ awareness of students’ online habits (email, Facebook, IM) and perceived parental expectations such as the belief that “staying online is [not] learning.” This urges educators to build an “appropriate connection between school life and their kids’ online habits” (Dang & Robertson, 2010c). On the student side, the study again suggests the three participation patterns, namely task-, content-, and community-oriented. It argues that effective interactions for learning “cannot be automatically created.” It requires facilitation through interactive task design, negotiated assessment guidelines, deliberate community-building that bridges offline and online ties, and careful calibration of teacher commenting because it can “either trigger or inhibit further interactions” (Dang & Robertson, 2010c). The pedagogical implications section also foregrounds culturally situated tensions. An ICT pedagogy that “empowers students” through content generation and negotiation may contradict traditional teacher roles, making resistance likely unless professional development accompanies integration, and teachers require regulatory protection given that mistakes in online communication are archived and can be captured for negative purposes. Overall, the paper provides an integrated picture of technology adoption as a negotiated shift in practice and power, not simply a technical rollout.

The last article, titled Learner autonomy: A synthesis of theory and practice, addresses learner autonomy as a long-standing focus of educational research and practice. It emphasises that autonomy has been “perceived and translated into practice in several ways” depending on political, social, and contemporary situations (Dang, 2012). Cited in over 160 documents since 2012, the article begins by reviewing definitional diversity while retaining a stable core. Learner autonomy is variously cast as knowing how to learn (Wenden, 1991), controlling learning activities (Cotterall, 1995), learning “without the involvement of a teacher” (Dickinson, 1987), a “capacity to make and carry out choices” (Littlewood, 1996), and rational decision-making over learning activities (Hunt, Gow, & Barnes, 1989). Yet, these definitions converge on responsible and effective understanding and management of learning processes. The article then systematises learner autonomy research through four complementary perspectives, namely psychological, technical, socio-cultural, and political-critical. It explicitly argues that, while these may appear divergent, they are mutually reinforcing. Personal characteristics and learning environments interact; negotiations and interactions occur in shared space; and agency and power are implicated in community life (Benson, 2006; Sinclair, 2000). Moving from perspectives to models, the paper reviews six models classified into those emphasising developmental stages and those focused on areas of control. It details Nunan’s (1997) five-level model, which includes awareness, involvement, intervention, creation, transcendence, along with learner actions at each level. Meanwhile, it also critiques the linear developmental assumptions by noting that learners may exhibit higher-level attributes without successfully performing earlier stages (e.g., Sinclair, 2009). The article culminates in a clear theoretical position that learner autonomy is socially-shaped, and its investigation should combine socio-cultural theory with community of practice. Research should examine contributions from personal and contextual aspects and their interactions. Learner autonomy-fostering practice must be considered in each local context. As a result, this paper provides the conceptual lens through which the three empirical articles’ findings, especially the importance of facilitation, community ties, and contextual constraints, can be read not as local anomalies but as theoretically anticipated features of learner autonomy in practice.

DISCUSSION

Across the four reprinted articles, learner autonomy emerges not as an individual trait that learners either have or lack, but as a dynamic capacity enacted through multiple, interlocking processes and shaped by the social conditions of learning. In the measurement-oriented model, learner autonomy is conceptually organised into three core processes, namely initiating, monitoring, and evaluating learning, which are “distinct” yet “inherently interconnected,” functioning as complementary elements in a continuous cycle rather than discrete stages (Dang, 2025a; Little, 2003). This process view aligns with the position of the critical review article that learner autonomy is “socially-shaped,” internally generated through multidirectional negotiations with community enablements and constraints, and best understood through socio-cultural theory and community of practice (Lantolf, 2000; Wenger, 1999; Toohey, 2007). Importantly, the measurement model also argues that the increasing role of digital tools justifies treating technology-supported learning as a distinct dimension in understanding learner autonomy (Dang, 2025a). This suggestion resulted in empirical studies many years later (e.g., Dang, 2025b). These arguments together set up a coherent lens for interpreting the empirical studies. What matters is not merely whether students use technology, but whether technology use sustains or erodes the learner autonomy cycle of initiating–monitoring–evaluating within a socially mediated learning ecology.

The three empirical articles provide converging evidence that students’ engagement in a Moodle-based virtual learning space is differentiated, patterned, and contingent on pedagogy, especially task design, assessment expectations, and facilitative support. A consistent finding is that effective interaction for learning purposes cannot be automatically created, and therefore requires proper facilitation through (i) designing online tasks whose completion requires interaction, (ii) providing and possibly negotiating guidelines for postings counted toward evaluation, (iii) leveraging offline relationships to strengthen online community (and vice versa), and (iv) calibrating teacher commenting because it can trigger or inhibit further interactions. In parallel, the online-communication study highlights a clear orientation toward immediacy. Students prefer synchronous modes and instant responses. Meanwhile, online educational communities also require support, reinforcement, and nurture from the facilitators and real-life connections. At a more granular level, the same study proposes that community formation tends to depend on pre-existing offline connections and “latent ties” developed through navigation in the virtual environment (Haythornthwaite, 2005), and it explicitly calls for comparative investigation of LMS-based academic communities and long-established social-network communities whose participation may be less dependent on offline ties (Nip, 2004). Collectively, these findings reposition “engagement” as a negotiated outcome. Students’ online participation is not simply a function of platform availability, but a product of how tasks, relationships, and facilitation shape learners’ willingness to invest cognitively and socially in the virtual space.

These empirical conclusions also intensify the centrality of teachers’ ideas and working conditions in any learner autonomy-and-engagement agenda. The LMS integration case argues that facilitating transactions of knowledge construction is critical in online learning environments and explicitly urges research on teachers’ perception and use of ICT as well as students’ online behaviours. It further locates teachers’ ICT adoption within a complex ecology of beliefs, workload realities, and local expectations, noting that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs can predict whether they resist, adapt to, or innovate with ICT (e.g., Cox et al., 2004; Higgins & Moseley, 2001). The limitations and implications sections sharpen the research need. Studies could not examine how teachers’ reinforcement and engagement with the LMS might affect students’ participation patterns. It is more sufficient to call for follow-up work on teachers’ online preferences and their potential impact on students’ behaviours. At the same time, the article warns that ICT pedagogy that empowers students through content generation, interaction, and negotiation can contradict traditional and culturally familiar teacher roles. Therefore, professional development must accompany integration, and regulations should protect teachers because online communication can be archived and captured for negative purposes. This argument resonates with the insistence presented in the last paper that learner autonomy should not be framed as “an ability to work alone solely,” but as dialogic negotiation and interaction within immediate situations. The implication is that teacher facilitation is not a peripheral support service around students’ learner autonomy. Rather, teacher practices and institutional protections are part of the socio-cultural conditions under which autonomy can be enacted and sustained.

Findings from the four articles consistently show that technology-mediated engagement is neither uniform nor inherently effective. They position learner autonomy and engagement as pedagogically constructed outcomes rather than as platform affordances. Virtual learning spaces can support learner autonomy only when students remain meaningfully connected to the learning process and to others in the learning community, and when teachers and course design intentionally sustain those connections. More recent AI-focused research sharpens the significance of these reprinted findings by showing what can happen when that pedagogical and social scaffolding is weakened or bypassed. Dang (2025b) reports teachers’ observations that widespread GenAI use can make students “more passive and reliant,” with recurring practices such as copying generated responses without studying them, refusing peer collaboration, and choosing speed over engagement even when time pressure is absent. These practices directly demonstrate that GenAI can restrict initiating learning (through diminished planning and material selection), hinder monitoring (by disconnecting learners from reflective engagement with learning materials), and diminish evaluating learning (by preventing students from judging and dialoguing with generated answers). In other words, the recent research provides a contemporary mechanism that helps explain why the earlier Moodle studies insist that interaction must be designed for and nurtured. Without structures that require participation, negotiation, and reflection, technology use can collapse into product acquisition rather than learner autonomy development. Over-reliance may weaken collaborative and reflective skills, further reinforcing the emphasis of the reprinted articles on facilitation and contextual conditions as prerequisites for meaningful online communities and autonomous learning.

CONCLUSION

This reprinted issue brings into a single, accessible collection four closely related contributions that together clarify what learner autonomy and engagement in technology-supported language learning can and cannot be expected to achieve in higher education. The three empirical studies demonstrate that students’ engagement with an LMS-based virtual learning space is patterned, varied, and strongly shaped by pedagogical design and facilitation. Student participation tends to cluster around task-, content-, and community-oriented orientations, and meaningful interaction and community formation require explicit support, reinforcement, and connections to offline relationships. The critical review article provides the conceptual scaffolding needed to interpret these findings, arguing that learner autonomy is multifaceted, socially shaped, and best understood through models and perspectives that recognise interaction, negotiation, and the interplay between personal characteristics and contextual conditions. This set of documents also reinforces a central point for current debates, agreeing that technology expands opportunities for learning, but autonomy and engagement remain pedagogically constructed outcomes, not automatic by-products of platform access.

The significance of reprinting these works is therefore both scholarly and practical. Scholarly, the issue preserves a coherent body of contextually grounded research that continues to be relevant as higher education navigates successive waves of educational technology from early LMS and Web 2.0 environments to today’s AI-inflected learning ecology. Practically, it restores access to studies that offer actionable, locally responsive implications for teaching. Designing tasks for interactions is necessary, calibrating teacher feedback to encourage rather than suppress peer exchange, building bridges between online participation and offline ties, and recognising that teacher beliefs, institutional conditions, and socio-cultural expectations mediate what technology integration can achieve. At the same time, the issue highlights the need to protect and enable teachers as facilitators in virtual spaces, given the heightened visibility and permanence of online communication and the potential tension between autonomy-empowering pedagogy and traditional role expectations.

Looking forward, the documents in this issue collectively indicate a useful next research agenda which is both programmatic and responsive to new technological realities. First, research should integrate robust conceptualisation with empirical operationalisation by mapping student participation orientations and online habits onto autonomous learning processes and by treating technology-supported learning as a distinct autonomy dimension rather than a generic contextual variable. Second, building on the repeated claim that interaction cannot be automatically created, further studies should test design principles and facilitation strategies that reliably generate knowledge-construction transactions and sustainable community participation, including comparative work on LMS-based academic communities versus social-network communities and the roles of latent ties and offline connections in each. Third, teacher-centred investigations should move beyond attitude reporting to examine how teachers’ online preferences, feedback practices, risk perceptions, and institutional protections shape students’ engagement trajectories. These causal links have been identified as a limitation and a priority for follow-up inquiry. Finally, given contemporary accounts of students’ product-oriented, instant-answer behaviours in technology-rich environments, future research should explicitly examine how emerging tools can either support or undermine learner autonomy processes, and what pedagogical, ethical, and equity-oriented interventions are required to ensure that digital participation strengthens rather than replaces learners’ reflective and collaborative capacities.

In conclusion, this reprinted issue does more than preserve important scholarship. It re-establishes an evidence-based and conceptually coherent foundation for current and future work on learner autonomy, student engagement in virtual learning spaces, and teachers’ professional thinking in English language education in higher education. By bringing these articles back into circulation, the issue supports renewed inquiry that is theoretically grounded, methodologically attentive to context, and pedagogically oriented toward designing virtual learning environments in which learner autonomy is enacted through interaction, negotiation, and sustained learner agency.