Understanding the Indonesian EFL Zen Students' Synchronous Engagement in a Research Course

Synchronous learning engagement has been studied during the pandemic COVID-19. However, few studies investigated Zen participants' engagement in particular courses. The study aims to disclose the EFL Zen students' devotion to synchronous instructional research courses during the disruption phase. The study focuses on the students'; miscellaneous preferences, commitments, technological learning support, topic searching reports (TSR), and research proposals submitted (RPS). The design is a survey study with descriptive qualitative and quantitative data. 24 students were purposively chosen as total samplings. Three instruments were employed to take data; Google forms (GF), electronic observation, and reflection. The 24 participants answered questions four times in a semester through GF. The data were analyzed in descriptive and parametric statistics. The result shows that the participants changed their time preferences due to changing habits and practical reasons. Google Meet and Zoom have caused different impacts and raised various insights. The majority engaged technologically at the basic level. This study also reveals the poor quality of the participants in presenting some essential parts of a thesis proposal. They faced various difficulties in presenting sections of their RPS. The statistics test shows a significant positive correlation between TPR and RPS (r=0.862, p<0.01). It is concluded that the EFL Zen students perform their optimum engagement and learning achievement despite being supported by sophisticated technology. This research implies that teachers need various scenarios to employ online platforms and charge more creative activities to harvest optimum learning outcomes.