With online learning solutions responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic, it is important for educational technologists and other practitioners to understand how learners are experiencing the demands of socially distanced online learning and how they conceive of themselves within distant spaces and digital communities. Research into the metacognitions of learners provides a non-technocratic focal point through which such information can be extracted. Framing learner self-beliefs as a form of metacognitive knowledge, the current article presents a virtual-reality-assisted thematic analysis into the self-appraisals of 210 socially distanced online learners at a Japanese university. The study focuses on the discursive rationalizations expressed in service of the academic self-concept. Four themes were identified in the data: formal assessment, affect and emotion, self-regulation, and transformative awareness. Such research provides educators with a platform for pedagogical intervention and course design considerations relative to the challenges of the online learning experience.