Play to Protect: Evaluating Cyber Threat Defender in South African Cybersecurity Education

Abstract

Cybersecurity education in higher education is predominantly theoretical and lecture-centred despite sustained calls for more active and experiential pedagogies. Serious games have been proposed as a promising mechanism for supporting applied reasoning and systems thinking in technical curricula, yet relatively little empirical work examines how students at different stages of disciplinary development perceive such interventions. This study evaluates Cyber Threat Defender (CTD), a strategy-based serious card game designed to simulate cybersecurity concepts such as attack-defence dynamics, risk trade-offs, and layered protection strategies. Using a design-based implementation research approach, CTD was integrated into an undergraduate cybersecurity curriculum at a South African university. The study compares perceptions between two cohorts: second-year students encountering cybersecurity concepts for the first time and final-year students with more developed disciplinary understanding. Quantitative data were collected using Likert-scale instruments measuring perceived educational value, engagement, usability, and curricular relevance, complemented by qualitative responses exploring gameplay experiences and conceptual insights. An additional ruleless second-year session was conducted as a control condition to isolate the influence of instructional clarity on gameplay usability. Descriptive statistical analysis and thematic coding were applied to examine differences in perception across cohorts. Both groups report strong engagement and support for curricular integration of the game, while final-year students demonstrate stronger alignment between gameplay mechanics and cybersecurity concepts. The control condition indicates that rule clarity significantly affects gameplay usability without undermining the perceived educational value of the intervention. The findings further suggest that contextualisation within South African socio-technical environments can enhance the perceived relevance of serious game interventions. These findings suggest that serious games like CTD can support experiential cybersecurity learning when implemented with appropriate instructional scaffolding. The study contributes empirical evidence from a South African context and highlights the role of disciplinary maturity in shaping how students interpret game-based learning interventions.