Addressing Cybersecurity Issues Through Collaborative Digital PBL: A Case Study of University-Government-Industry Collaboration on Romance Scams

Abstract: This paper presented a qualitative case study of an industry–academia–government collaborative Project–Based Learning (PBL) initiative designed to raise awareness of romance scams in Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan. The study examined how interdisciplinary students from non-computing disciplines, including those with liberal arts backgrounds, contributed to regional cybersecurity awareness through structured collaboration informed by a helix-based framework. This study also situates the initiative within a Quadruple Helix framework of regional collaboration. The project integrated students’ critical and contextual thinking with anonymized cybercrime data and technical guidance from an IT company. Students engaged in data interpretation, content development, and dissemination, producing awareness videos for regional audiences. Findings indicated that students applied interpretive capacity—the ability to discern social issues, translate them into context, and communicate them effectively—through interdisciplinary collaboration. The case shows that collaborative PBL enhanced participants’ digital skills and regional cybersecurity awareness, while enabling students from non-computing disciplines, including those with liberal arts backgrounds, to act as contributors to solving social issues. Although limited in scale, the study highlighted the role of interdisciplinary education in the era of digital transformation.