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The present interview study reports on eight Thai undergraduate students’ experiences of online learning at three different Indonesian universities based in East Java, Indonesia. Semi-structured interviewing was designed based on the sociocultural framework proposed by Ma (2017) to elucidate the students’ voices of online learning experience. The data garnered from online interviewing were transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis. The study elicits three important data themes: the agility of the student participants to adapt online learning to suit their learning needs, the participants’ strategies to build learning autonomy, and the participants’ ability to sustain their learning motivation. This study stresses the important roles of such other agents as teachers, parents, and friends in providing international students with mental and emotional support to help them get through COVID-19 affected online learning.

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PurposeThis phenomenological case study reports how 16 participating students built their leadership skill through a community-based service-learning project as a part of their undergraduate program at an Islamic university in Indonesia. Education for sustainability framework promoted by Warwick (2016) was employed to portray students' leadership development and explore their lived experience while doing service-learning project in their neighborhood.Design/methodology/approachPhenomenological case study was employed to portray how the participants engaged in projects that empower the community during their service amidst the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. They were interviewed using online platforms such as WhatsApp and Zoom Meeting. To triangulate the data, the photos elicited during their field study posted in social media were also presented as visual data. The interview data and photo elicitation were transcribed, interpreted using interpretative phenomenological analysis and thematically analyzed.FindingsThe findings of the study showcase that the student participants transformed their sense of agency as learners into leaders. The service-learning program has also become a springboard for them to engage in the community service and build strategy to fill the local community's need, especially amid the pandemic of COVID-19.Research limitations/implicationsThere are two limitations in regards to this study. First, this study only examined data garnered from a small number of participants that could not be used to overgeneralize the results of the study. Second, the participants were interviewed upon the completion of their service-learning project. It did not investigate the sustainability of the projects that the participants had carried out after the service-learning program ended.Originality/valueWhile ample previous studies investigated how service-learning program that involved undergraduate students were enacted during COVID-19 pandemic, the present study specifically looked into how participants exercise their leadership skill upon the implementation of service-learning from education for sustainability framework promoted by Warwick (2016).