Guest editorial: Developing learner agency in smart environments

Smart environments integrated with digital technologies have emerged as a powerful tool to support personalized, interactive, and adaptive learning experiences. The central objective of developing smart environment is to foster learner agency enabling learners to develop the ability to take ownership and manage their own learning process. However, developing learner agency presents a significant challenge. It requires researchers, practitioners, and system developers to understand the roles of teachers and students, the instructional design, and the affordances of technologies to transfer learners from passive recipients to active participants in their learning process. To address the need, this special issue collected twenty-nine articles which underwent a rigorous peer review process. The acceptance rate for this special issue was less than fifteen percent and only four papers were accepted and included. The four papers discuss the application of instructional approaches and various digital tools such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and mobile technologies to design smart learning environments which foster and evaluate learner agency.