Project-Based Learning at Dracula Digital: A Comparative Perspective from Romania and Brunei

Abstract

Despite being an educational approach that has existed for more than five decades, project-based learning (PBL) has remained a conceptual fog, with limited applications beyond the medical and health sciences. This paper detailed the scarcity of the academic literature on PBL, specifically in relation to PBL and film productions and/or competitions. Using the Dracula Digital 2022 competition as the chosen context, this paper aimed to fill two gaps: (1) adding to the academic literature on PBL’s applications beyond those most frequently found in the medical and health sciences, the learning of foreign languages, or business and management learning; and (2) proposing that film production and competition are novel approaches to PBL. In an attempt to fill these research gaps, this study employed the 10 dimensions of PBL to identify the PBL components present in the Dracula Digital competition. The results showed that all 10 dimensions of PBL were found in the Dracula Digital competition, proving that film production and competition can indeed be considered an educational approach that satisfies PBL’s core components. This study calls for the consideration of a myriad of creative activities which should be added to curriculums to not only engage students in their learning but also reap the coveted benefits offered by the PBL approach.

1. Introduction

Project-based learning (PBL) is an educational approach that underscores the importance of implementing hands-on projects and solving problems in the real world, through accomplishing specifically targeted educational objectives. “Project-based learning is a more complex instructional concept than the term suggests. As any experienced practitioner knows, there is much more to project-based learning than the simple incorporation of projects into the curriculum” [1]. Sometimes, the projects enlarge the instructional curriculum without any predetermined expectations in advance, resulting in some surprisingly effective and novel pedagogical outcomes. Stoller (2006) goes on to categorise PBL into those projects that are highly structured by the teacher, those that are semi-structured (the details are determined by both the teacher and students), and those that are highly unstructured (completely giving students their independence in defining the directions and goals of the project), as applied in the second and foreign language-learning process [1]. Therefore, PBL is widely regarded as a solution to prompt students to diverge from mechanistic learning, stimulating their creative endeavours and enabling them to benefit from their creativity in a self-motivated learning process.

In this context, the annual Dracula Digital smartphone film-making competition provides an exceptional platform for engaging undergraduate students who are enrolled in the Digital Media major from Transilvania University of Brasov (UniTBv) and their counterparts majoring in the Design and Creative Industries (DCI) programme from Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) with the immersive PBL method. This paper will focus on the role of university-associated film festivals and competitions as a catalyst for motivating students specialising in digital media and screen productions to enhance and improve the quality of their creative works for both regular course assignments and specific competition projects. The key factors and aspects in the unfolding discussions include the production process of participating in a short film-making competition for multiple groups of students from both universities, the challenges and problems encountered by the students from each university as they work together in a culturally diverse production team, and how the students cooperate as a team and tackle those difficulties to achieve their creative purpose. The paper will, in particular, centre our analysis on the tangible experience of the group of Romanian and Bruneian students who participated in the final stage of the Dracula Digital Competition 2022, to highlight their PBL projects’ conception, practicality, and outcome.

The main research questions of this paper attempt to examine how PBL solutions may facilitate and encourage university students from different cultural backgrounds to work together to exert their creativity and accomplish their common artistic goal and what roles the teachers assume to maximise the students’ motivation to collaborate and complete their creative project independently during the PBL process. This paper will employ the 10 selected dimensions of PBL that were outlined by Charlin, Mann, and Hansen (1998) to elucidate the educational and creative journey of three undergraduate students from Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) and three undergraduate students from Transilvania University of Brasov (UniTBv), Romania, who engaged in making short films by smartphone camera for both their module assignments and the Dracula Digital final competition [2]. The ten dimensions presented in Charlin, Mann, and Hansen (1998), who used the term “problem-based learning” in the title of their article, provide a comprehensive and relevant framework for discussing our case study. Despite this, we consider this case study to be more characteristic of “project-based learning”, in line with the perspective of the authors who acknowledged the differences between the two terms [3,4].

There are three core components of PBL, which have been uniformly understood and accepted by researchers and other stakeholders (i.e., including teachers). First, PBL is an approach that revolves around or is initiated by a problem. This means that when PBL is first presented as the main approach for teaching, a problem task has already been conceived, and students work their way through resolving this problem as their overall educational goal. Through this process, students search for and acquire the necessary skills to resolve the issues related to the problem.

Second, PBL is an approach to learning. This means it encompasses the entire educational programme and is not merely an additional component to an existing, perhaps traditional, approach to teaching. PBL is used as a core concept in the construction of the entire curriculum that is to be delivered. For example, should an educator decide to use a PBL approach, the problem to be resolved must be identified at the start of the teaching process, and the entire learning session, which could be weeks of classes, must revolve around the learning and acquiring of skillsets and knowledge that are related to the pre-defined problem.

Finally, the third, and perhaps the most important core component, is that PBL is learner-centred. While the main problem that is to be resolved is almost always decided by the teacher, who understandably must adhere to the learning objectives of a set curriculum, the remaining process is steered by the students. So, students decide what component of the problem is to be addressed first, what skills are required, and what knowledge is necessary to be activated or gained to be successful in their endeavour. Teachers are the facilitators in PBL and are assumed to have the necessary knowledge to help guide students in the right direction in their problem solving but will only intervene when necessary. When is intervention necessary? Perhaps when students are steering in a completely wrong direction, or when students do not have prior knowledge of how to approach the problem or could not identify the new knowledge necessary to address their current problem—which could cause them to be stuck with no real lifeline to help them continue their endeavour. Therefore, intervention by teachers is occasionally necessary on a case-by-case basis, but the remaining process will be decided by the students themselves.

These three core components of PBL could be interpreted and applied in a myriad of ways as they are not restrictive, nor are they explained in adequate detail by Barrows (1986) [5]. While the lack of detail could be deemed disadvantageous, especially when aiming for uniformity in practice, they allow for a variation of interpretation that could work in different educational contexts. Thus, the scholars Charlin, Mann, and Hansen (1998) outlined the 10 selected dimensions of PBL, which were used in the current study to align the chosen educational context to the components of PBL [2]. We used the Dracula Digital 2022 competition as a case study to exemplify the above 10 selected dimensions of PBL, which is explained in detail in a later section.

The authors of this paper framed the case study under the project-based learning framework, aligning with English and Kitsantas’ (2013) statement that “the student-centred, inquiry-based pedagogical approaches of problem-based learning and project-based learning, which are collectively referred to here as PBL” [6]. Thus, the authors of this paper aligned with English and Kitsantas (2013) and considered that problem-based learning can be considered equivalent to project-based learning [6]. Though not so clearly stated as in English and Kitsantas (2013) [6], other more recent sources defined equivalent terms [7,8]. For example, in Chen & Yang (2019), PBL is defined as “…engage with real-world problems…”, or “learning to work together toward problem solutions”, or “solve authentic problems” [9]. At the same time, it is important to consider the authors who have highlighted the differences between problem-based learning and project-based learning. Savery (2006) argued that problem-based learning differs from project-based learning, which he referred to as inquiry-based learning, primarily in the role of the tutor [10]. In defining the main difference, he stated that in inquiry-based learning, the tutor facilitates learning and provides information, while in problem-based learning, the tutor supports the process but does not supply information, leaving that responsibility to the learners.

Regarding the use of abbreviations for problem-based learning and project-based learning, both of which are very common, we decided to follow the same approach as Jaleniauskiene and Lisaite (2023) to avoid confusion with problem-based learning [11]. Thus, we use the abbreviation PBL for project-based learning and the full term “problem-based learning” without abbreviation. To emphasise that this approach was considered correct by the authors of this article, it should be noted that the Jaleniauskiene and Lisaite (2023) article was published in “The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning” in a special issue on “Research Methodologies for Studying Problem-Based and Project-Based Learning”, where in the introduction of that special issue, Hung (2023) used PBL as an abbreviation for problem-based learning and PjBL as an abbreviation for project-based learning [11,12]. Wijnia et al. (2024) and Brassler and Dettmers (2017) also had the same approach to using abbreviations as Hung (2023) and implicitly acknowledged the differences between problem-based learning and project-based learning [12,13,14].

In conclusion, the authors of this article decide to use PBL as the abbreviation for project-based learning and use the full term “problem-based learning” where necessary. Moreover, when the authors used “PBL + film/media production” as key words to start a reference search, we surprisingly found a gap in the literature—the existing literature in this cross-over area was very rare. Therefore, we decide to structure this paper with a specific section, The Literature Review, to underscore this strong finding and make an attempt to close this gap.

2. The Literature Review

2.1. Project-Based Learning (PBL): A General Perspective

PBL is an instructional approach rooted in constructivist theory, emphasising active learning, collaboration, and real-world application [15]. PBL involves giving tasks to students, encompassing complex problems or challenges, often within a group setting, where they have to apply knowledge and skills from various disciplines to find solutions [3]. Stoller (2006) considered three levels of PBL: highly structured, semi-structured, and highly unstructured, each offering varying degrees of teacher guidance and student autonomy [1].

The problem-based learning approach was first implemented by Barrows in the late 1960s and was initially devised for the medical curriculum at McMaster University [16]. To date, there is no refined definition of PBL as, in practice, the concept is implemented in various ways, following the contextual needs of the learning situation. De Graaf and Kolmos (2007) stated that problem-based and project-based learning may vary to a certain degree, while also noting that projects usually result in a finished product, design, or report [17]. Kokotsaki et al. (2016) further emphasised that while problem-based learning focuses on the learning process, project-based learning must culminate in a tangible end product [18]. A short film submitted to a film festival is a project, further supporting the framing of this paper within a project-based learning framework. Servant-Miklos examined the key confusions in problem-based learning, particularly the use of the term to describe both the small-group tutorial method from McMaster and Maastricht universities in medical education and the problem-oriented project work method developed in Denmark, at Aalborg and Roskilde universities [16].

Many scholars have argued for continuity in applying PBL as it offers many advantages [19,20], despite being a conceptual fog [21]. Charlin, Mann, and Hansen (1998) attempted to clarify this “fog” by outlining the core principles of PBL and provided an overview of the dimensions in which the variations of PBL applications can be found [2]. They argued that variations are indeed found along these dimensions, but the curricula are still defined as PBL if they adhere to the core principles of the concept. Similarly, Taylor and Mifflin (2008) made comparisons between the intention of PBL during its inception and the current application of this concept, simultaneously proving the possibility of having multiple interpretations of PBL and yet still being aligned with the core elements of the concept [22]. Newman (2005) also took a relatively similar approach, in which he provided an overview of the key features, the surrounding theories that influenced the development of Barrow’s PBL, and the relationship between the theories and the features found in the concept [20].

Kirschner and Sweller (2006) argued that inquiry-based learning was less effective than guided instruction due to the heavy demands placed on the participants’ working memory, which can hinder the accumulation of knowledge as long-term memory [23]. They highlighted that unguided learning approaches often led to a cognitive overload and inefficiencies, particularly for novice learners, as they struggled without sufficient formal learning platforms to integrate new information. Such a position is quite rare, as the majority of studies advocate for the benefits of PBL and its alternative denominations (problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, etc.).

Schmidt et al. (2007) argued that labelling problem-based learning as unguided or minimally guided instruction was incorrect, by explaining how elements of this type of learning enabled flexible guidance and cognitive load management, demonstrating its compatibility with the organisation of human cognitive structures [24]. This is evidenced by the recent literature review conducted by Yu and Zin (2023), which found overwhelming support for the advantages of PBL, while revealing that strategies for improving and enhancing the impact of this teaching and learning method were necessary [25].

This paper will not attempt to address the conceptual fog, as PBL has long been implemented in various ways, particularly in the fields of medicine and health sciences. However, we will attempt to map the dimensions identified in PBL (Charlin, Mann & Hansen, 1998) into a curriculum that features both didactic teaching as well as applied learning, in the form of a short film production project for a smartphone film-making competition. We argue that this combination of approaches to teaching is PBL and can serve as a platform for the application of PBL in other fields aside from medicine and health sciences.

2.2. Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Short Film Productions

For the correct framing of our case study, the authors conducted a literature review to identify the relevant papers on PBL for students in media-related fields. The review sought to explore how PBL is utilised as an educational and multi-competence developmental tool, both within regular curricular contexts and in extracurricular settings like film festivals.

Serving as a foundation, this part of the literature review aimed to provide support for insights to situate the subsequent case study. It synthesised arguments and ideas from previous research without introducing new contributions, focusing instead on framing our case study in a relevant manner for readers and potentially paving the way for future research directions.

We consider this part of the research to be a rigorous study that allows the discovery of emerging trends in articles from the area by focusing on the Web of Science (WoS) platform and the Scopus platform. These platforms are known for maintaining high quality standards related to scientific research and standardising the information required in this type of research.

Initially, only articles published in English were considered for this study. However, due to the low number of articles found, an English abstract from a German article was included, along with two additional abstracts where the full articles were not available. The search query used for both the Scopus and WoS platforms was (“project-based learning” OR “PBL”) AND (“media production project” OR “short film” OR “student film competition”). This yielded only seven articles from Scopus (Figure 1) and five articles from the WoS (Figure 2). This surprising result suggests a possible research gap in the area of PBL for short film production/competition, despite the term PBL having a widespread presence in the literature. For instance, searches using the query string (‘project-based learning” or “PBL”) returned 20,979 results from the WoS and 28,671 results from Scopus.

Some articles employed PBL not for short film creation but rather to enhance its effectiveness by incorporating short films. Bergdahl, Fyrenius, and Persson (2004) detailed a project initiated by the Faculty of Health Sciences at Linköping University for six undergraduate medical programs, aiming to develop web-based scenarios for patient case studies and other medical issues [26]. Both students and tutors found these scenarios more motivating and interesting compared to traditional paper case studies.

For Soroa et al. (2019), only the abstract available on the WoS was analysed [27]. In this case, 59 university students majoring in special education collaborated with 13 social agents and six teachers to create short films showcasing inclusive practices. The project employed PBL, aiming to address social diversity and promote inclusive education. Qualitative and quantitative data showed positive student feedback and competency development.

For Skelin et al. (2008), only the abstract present both on Scopus and the WoS was analysed as the rest of the article is written in German [28]. The abstract mentions seven examples of challenging PBL situations using short films, along with potential tutor interventions. However, it is difficult to conclude from the abstract whether PBL was applied for learners who were involved in the process of creating short films or if the short films were used solely as a tool to enhance the effectiveness of PBL.

In Gonzales, Correa Molina and Cardona (2017), PBL was employed concerning an oral production in English for second-year bachelor degree candidates of foreign languages at the Unidad Central del Valle Del Cauca in Tuluá City, Colombia [29]. Short film production, alongside podcasting and digital storytelling, was utilised to enhance the effectiveness of the students’ learning of English, not to develop competencies in short film production. In the same area of using short films for learning English, Hong (2019) presented a PBL case study in a culinary English class, in which students created a short film demonstrating the preparation of three pineapple dishes, with support from teacher instruction and group discussions [30]. Consistent with the findings from other PBL case studies related to learning English, the results showed positive student attitudes towards project-based lessons. However, the perceived improvements in learning efficiency were limited.

Mallinson (2018) presented how students engaged in active learning, resulting in short films being produced by the students and the instructor to showcase the linguistic diversity on campus; film production was integrated into the doctoral sociolinguistics seminar of the author, structured around PBL principles [31]. The project aimed to provide students with hands-on experience in sociolinguistic data collection, from research design to dissemination. As a result, students created short films as shareable products to effectively raise the awareness of language variation.

In the Cabo Verde context, Fonseca et al. (2021) demonstrated how PBL was implemented with high-school students to enhance their attitudes toward reptile conservation [32]. The students scripted, shot, and produced a short film, focusing on an endangered species. By being presented publicly, the short film managed to elicit positive community responses. The study revealed the effectiveness of PBL in promoting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and improving public attitudes toward species conservation through community engagement in film making. In the same area of environmental protection and ESD, Fajariyanti, Sarwanto, and Muzzazinah (2023) explored the impact of PBL models in short film-making on students’ creative thinking abilities regarding environmental pollution [33]. Conducted in 2021 in Serang City, Indonesia, the study involved 76 10th-grade students. The results revealed that PBL in short film making positively influenced the students’ creative thinking abilities, with the experimental class demonstrating higher levels compared to the control class.

The most relevant and the newest article discovered in this search of the literature, containing only nine items, aligns closely with our case study’s objectives. López-González et al.’s (2023) conference paper focused on undergraduate students in media-related fields, employing an integrated curriculum (IC) and PBL to create a year-long activity spanning multiple courses [34]. The research methods included face-to-face group interviews, survey questionnaires, and grade comparisons. The results indicated an improved media product quality and high instructor satisfaction, although students’ feelings were mixed.

In addition, Liu, Ling, and Nechita (2023) adopted significant learning experiences (Fink, 2013) as the primary research methodology to investigate the function of higher-institution-based film festivals as a vehicle to improve the production quality delivered by media-majored students, while PBL was partially used as a supplemental method for the Dracula Digital competition in a general comparison with the PRISM UBD Short Film Festival [35,36]. Liu and Fischer (2023) also stressed that higher education film festivals, e.g., the Brunei Film Blitz and the PRISM UBD Short Film Festival, are “industry nodes” to connect higher education of media production with the domestic screen industry, as well as stressing the positive mutual impacts that they have on each other in the Bruneian context [37]. Therefore, by employing the Dracula Digital 2022 final competition as the sole case study to exemplify the 10 selected dimensions of PBL [2], the current study was a logical and meticulous continuation of a more concentrated and in-depth research domain, which was closely relevant to our previous research.

2.3. Project-Based Learning (PBL) in Intercultural Settings

As the current case study involved the cooperation of students from two countries, looking for the relevant academic sources describing intercultural cooperation in PBL settings in higher education was performed by using the keywords “project-based learning” OR “PBL” AND “intercultural” query on both the Scopus and WoS platforms. The search yielded a total of 81 articles from the WoS and 101 from Scopus, indicating that while the intercultural dimension of PBL initiatives remains an area worthy of exploration, it does not have a research gap as significant as the one evident in the context of PBL within media production settings.

Many articles linking PBL with the intercultural dimension in the context of higher education are focused on projects related to learning a foreign language. For example, Avsheniuk (2023) explored the efficacy of PBL within English classes at a Ukrainian university for enhancing the students’ intercultural communicative competency and autonomous learning [38]. It demonstrated how PBL facilitates interaction with course material, fosters long-term memory retention, and cultivates attitudes conducive to education, with students expressing its benefits in grasping intercultural knowledge and a sensitivity to cross-cultural issues. Voronchenko, Klimenko, and Kostina (2015) found that PBL in international student groups fosters high levels of respect, self-acceptance, and tolerance towards representatives of different nations, shaping not only professional competencies but also a tolerant culture that is critical for positive global community engagement [39]. Goldstein (2016) found that the PBL approach fostered interpersonal and intercultural interactions among participants, contributing positively to the social atmosphere within the classroom [40]. In relation to an online PBL project, Chen and Du (2021) highlighted challenges in supporting intercultural collaborative learning for Chinese foreign language beginners, emphasising the importance of balancing group work and individual support, allocating more time for team dynamics, utilising technological tools effectively, and providing learners with the sufficient time and skills to establish partnerships, ask insightful questions, and deepen their understanding and reflection of culture [41].

Švejdarová (2020) advocated for swift responses from companies and higher education institutions to the challenges posed by increasing diversity, emphasising the strategic imperative of managing diversity and proposing agile team PBL as a means to foster respect, listening, and appreciation among students, with potential applications in both educational and professional settings [42].

In a medical PBL context, Wang, Liu, and Zhang (2023) found that cultural diversity influences collaborative learning, as understanding cultural differences enhances students’ success and fosters effective multiethnic collaboration [43]. In another medical learning context emphasising PBL and intercultural engagement, Ahmad et al. (2023) demonstrated how public health students from Australia and India cultivated intercultural communication skills, gained global exposure, and fostered intercultural understanding while collectively addressing global health issues through focused case studies, supporting the development of global-mindedness [44].

Nielsen, Du, and Kolmos (2010) highlighted the significant challenge of coordinating the diverse backgrounds in ICT and engineering projects, emphasising a gap in the understanding of PBL’s role in collaborative, innovative development [45]. In another PBL and ICT-learning higher education context, Sáez López, Miyata, and Domínguez-Garrido (2016) examined the interactions, attitudes, and practices of college students across different countries who were engaging in dynamic, multimedia, and intercultural activities, highlighting the benefits of such activities, including enhanced ICT skills and content creation [46].

Jiang, Dahl and Du (2023) found that engineering students identified self-awareness, customised resources, and on-campus activities as decisive elements for developing learner agency in intercultural PBL teams, highlighting the importance of supporting diverse student needs and experiences to enhance intercultural competencies and collaboration in PBL settings [47]. In the same context of engineering students engaging in PBL, Ergai et al. (2023) highlighted the importance of intercultural communication competencies and emphasised the need for tailored training programs that address the specific challenges and dynamics present in engineering environments [48]. Malheiro et al. (2019) presented a PBL framework aimed at fostering key engineering skills, including multidisciplinary teamwork, intercultural communication, and ethical and sustainability-oriented problem solving, wherein students, organised into diverse teams before the semester, engaged in the project to encounter cultural and scientific diversity, thus promoting learning autonomy [49]. Fielden Burns and Rico Garcia (2021) presented a PBL approach aimed at fostering intercultural and linguistic competencies among design engineering students, demonstrating PBL’s effectiveness in integrating these skills and raising their awareness of cultural factors in product design through problem-solving teamwork on critical incidents [50]. Similarly, Fernández-Bravo, García-Juliá, and Peñalba (2021) concluded that future professionals must possess not only language proficiency but also high levels of international and intercultural skills, suggesting the integration of new activities and approaches into higher education curricula, as exemplified by an international PBL project within the software engineering course involving Dutch and Spanish students [51]. Webster et al.’s (2022) findings illustrated PBL as an intercultural experience, through which culture shock evolves into acceptance over time through internal resources and peer collaboration, offering insights valuable for implementing PBL and other complex learning methods that respond to learners’ lived experiences, emphasising the importance of considering students’ motivations, emotions, and social interactions to facilitate their transformation and well-being [52].

3. Materials and Methods

The case study in this paper—the Dracula Digital 2022 competition—provided a precious opportunity to examine how the cross-cultural factors played out in a short film production process that was completed by two groups of students who came from Brunei and Romania—two fundamentally differing cultural backgrounds—and collaboratively worked together for one creative project. An elaborate discussion about how PBL functions in an intercultural environment will be reported in a later section. Where appropriate, excerpts from interviews with students have been included, which have been copied verbatim from the transcript (including grammatical errors and informal expressions or slang).

According to Csikszentmihalyi (2014), people experience the most positive feelings and have the greatest intrinsic motivation when they are in a state of “flow”, which occurs when difficult challenges are matched by strong skills [53]. Flow experiences are crucial for developing complex thinking, behaviour, and talent. A competition like the Dracula Digital provides such an experience, as it presents difficult challenges and demands participants to exert strong audiovisual production skills by using a smartphone camera to make a short film within a limited timeframe (72 h) [54].

Although Craft (2003) stated that “little c creativity” was not necessarily tied to a produced outcome, the outcomes of students collaborating to compete for the Dracula Digital trophy precisely fell into the type of ‘little c creativity’ described by her, given that the competition involved both the grasp of applications and the use of imagination, intelligence, and self-expression [55]. Craft et al. (2014) also emphasised that creativity included novel, purposeful outcomes and reflective problem solving, which the Dracula Digital competition encourages all the participants to endeavour toward, framing this project-based learning (PBL) initiative in a strong creative dimension [56].

Taylor and Miflin (2008) made comparisons between the intention of PBL during its inception and the current application of this concept, simultaneously proving the possibility of having multiple interpretations of PBL and still being aligned with the core elements of the concept. Attempts have been made to clarify PBL, to ensure a more uniform learning approach. However, these attempts have been largely unsuccessful due to the different contexts in which PBL is applied [22]. Learning contexts, after all, are influential to the application of the approach, and PBL was initially designed for medicine and health sciences. What has been successful, at least in the opinion of the authors, is the outlining of the core components or key elements found in all approaches claiming to be PBL. These components will be outlined below as a point of departure for this paper, as the educational contexts for the applications of PBL in the current study have substantially transformed from those for which PBL was initially designed. This section will also outline the 10 selected dimensions of PBL that have been proven to contain variations in the application of PBL but remain steadfast in aligning with the core components and hence, the goal of PBL.

3.1. Dracula Digital as a Sub-Programme of Dracula Film Festival—The Case Study

The Dracula Film Festival (DFF) was founded and launched in Brasov, Romania, and has maintained its thematic dedication to the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres since its inception. It distinguishes itself from other film festivals in Romania by not solely focusing on the competitive aspect but being aimed at revitalising international cinematic landscapes. Embedded within the festival’s mission and values is a commitment to democratising film education; the DFF prioritises cultural education over commercial gains.

A notable component of the DFF is the Dracula Digital competition—a smartphone short film-making competition, which started from DFF’s 4th edition in 2016 with an aim to promote film education among youngsters. The Dracula Digital competition gives young people from all over the world an opportunity to make short films with a handy smartphone camera and is supplemented with a series of workshops targeting participants aged between 16 and 29 who are passionate about film-making and photography, enabling them to learn and express themselves through making short films.

The collaborative initiative between the Faculty of Sociology and Communication at the Transilvania University of Brasov, the Fanzin Association, and the Zile și Nopti (Days and Nights) media group—the organiser of the DFF events—began in 2015. Initially, students from the Communication and Public Relations programme served as volunteers, with three academics (one of whom is a co-author of this paper) providing an evaluation framework for the event. By 2018, this partnership expanded to involve first-year students from the Digital Media programme in the annual Dracula Digital final competition.

The collaboration not only provided a platform for promoting the Dracula Digital competition among the students from Transilvania University of Brasov (UniTBv) but also created a tool to engage Digital Media students in real-world projects. These projects leveraged PBL to enhance students’ academic outcomes, skills, and competencies by providing opportunities to apply theoretical knowledge and develop practical skills. These cases have been documented in academic papers and project books [57,58,59,60].

In 2019, the Dracula Digital competition gained an international dimension thanks to cooperation with the Faculty of Sociology and Communication. With funding from the Romanian Ministry of Education, Dracula Digital expanded the number of teams participating in the final to five teams of students. Two teams included first-year students from the Digital Media programme at UniTBv, while three teams were composed of international students from two partner universities: the Polytechnic University of Ancona (Italy) and the University of Franche-Comté (France). The 2019 edition also marked the first multinational team, as one student from Meisei University Tokyo (Japan) joined a UniTBv Digital Media team.

In 2020, amid the global COVID-19 pandemic and widespread travel restrictions, UBD students participated in the Dracula Digital competition for the first time—in a remote mode. Despite the logistical challenges, UBD’s short films, submitted via YouTube links from Brunei, impressed the judges and secured two positions among the six finalists. Ultimately, Image (3 min) clinched the prestigious Dracula Digital 2020 Trophy, marking a significant achievement for UBD [61,62].

Building on this success, in 2022, UBD’s participation grew, with seven short films being submitted to the preliminary selection of the Dracula Digital competition and three students travelling to Brasov with funding from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), UBD. The student film makers from Brunei and Brasov engaged in cross-cultural collaboration, showcased their creative prowess, and facilitated cross-cultural exchanges with Romanian peers, exemplifying several key elements of significant learning experiences [35]. The cross-cultural collaboration underscored the principles of PBL and formed the essence of the case study around which this article is built. The involvement of UBD students in the Dracula Digital competition highlighted the potential of PBL initiatives in the higher education of short film-making. By investing in extracurricular projects that promote creativity, innovation, and social impact, universities can facilitate meaningful intercultural exchanges and prepare students for the complexities of a globalised world, especially when direct interactions with students from other countries and cultures are employed.

While the author recognises that certain activities may be common in film schools, such as video production and collaboration with production houses, the DDF is unique in that it provides a platform for collaboration between student film makers from various countries (Italy, France, Japan, and Brunei Darussalam) and the list will continue to expand with time. This approach allows the DFF to provide experiences that closely mirror professional practices, which simultaneously providing opportunities for students to solve real-world problems akin to those faced in the industry. While UniTBv has had successful runs in providing ample opportunities to practice PBL in the institution, UBD was unable to provide adequate exposure for students to contemporary tools and practices, aside from local film festivals [37]. By leveraging the DDF to open doors for more real-world learning opportunities for students and higher education institutions and industry collaborations we can offer a more dynamic, realistic, and interactive learning environment that has the potential to better prepare students for the industry’s demands [35].

3.2. The Selected Dimensions of PBL Identified in Dracula Digital 2022

The reason for us to choose the Dracula Digital 2022 competition as a case study for this paper was mainly because it is an exemplary event through which to investigate how the PBL method works in an intercultural circumstance during the process of a creative project. Creswell and Poth (2018) defined a case study as “an in-depth exploration of a bounded system (e.g., activity, event, process, or individuals) based on extensive data collection” [63]. In this case study, we focused on how those cross-cultural factors played out and contributed to the multiple dimensions of PBL solutions in variable ways during a “bounded system” of a short film production that was co-produced by two groups of university students from Brunei and Romania, two different cultural backgrounds, to achieve a common artistic goal—the Dracula Digital 2022 final competition.

As most researchers seek to develop an in-depth understanding of a case by collecting multiple forms of data such as pictures, scrapbooks, videotapes, and e-mails [63], we decided to document the students’ entire creative process by taking some photos and making a documentary about their collaboration, while we kept the intervention into their independent creative collaboration to a minimum. Most of their filming took place during nighttime and inside one of their student dormitories; as it was not convenient for us to document their activities in this scenario, we asked the students themselves to take some photos and behind-the-scene videos as an alternative way to collect data. Some of these images taken by the students themselves were later edited into the documentary, which demonstrates their cooperation in making the Dracula Digital short film.

An essential component of a case study is the interviews of the research participants. Since we kept our intervention in their creative process to a minimum and motivated them to solve problems and achieve their learning goals independently, we recorded a set of semi-structured interviews of all six students only after they had submitted their co-produced short film to the final competition. The interview questions mainly revolved around what respective positions they took in the co-produced short film, how they felt about their overall collaboration with their peers, what the challenges and difficulties they faced and solved during the production process were, and what they learnt from the entire process and from their counterparts, etc. The interview also included questions about their previous media production and cross-cultural experiences. The researchers’ reflective notes consisted of a detailed analysis of each interview and of the participants’ reflections during the careful review process of the above-recorded footage. A considerable portion of these interviews, eventually, appeared in a completed documentary titled A Journey to Brasov (2023, 9 min, dir. Yong Liu) and was shown in a couple of international film festivals [64]. Both the documentary A Journey to Brasov (2023) and the three UBD students’ trip to Brasov, Romania, were funded by the FIC Research Grant of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (Grant number: UBD/RSCH/1.2/FICBF(b)/2021/022). An ethics approval letter from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UBD and six consent forms signed by all the interviewed students from both Romania and Brunei have been submitted along with this paper.

The second author and third author have been considerably involved with the Dracula Digital competition’s activities since 2020. They both know this uniquely designed smartphone film-making competition very well, so they positioned themselves as both facilitators and observers for their roles in designing the learning activities during the Dracula Digital 2022 final competition. They know the Dracula Digital organisers organise three masterclasses that are offered by professional film makers to all the final competitors during the final competition, which are tremendously precious learning opportunities for media production students. They also believed that the participating students from Romania and Brunei, from different cultural backgrounds, would learn much more by working together as a joint crew to complete the whole process of making a short film. As the facilitators, the third author from the host university (UniTBv) arranged the accommodation for the three visiting Bruneian students very close to where the three Romanian students lived, which made their interaction and cooperation very convenient in the three competition days. The second author from UBD arrived in Brasov earlier than the three Bruneian students did, so he introduced them to their Romanian peers the next day after they arrived in Brasov, and the two groups of students started their location scouting right away. Other than facilitating the meeting of the two groups of students and reminding them to attend the three scheduled masterclasses, the majority of the role of the two authors was being close observers of the students while they conducted their project by documenting their activities related to their creative process, while intervening minimally. As the close observer, the second author interviewed the six students with a camera only after they had already submitted their completed short film into the online submission portal, to retain as much as possible the creative independence of the joint team of students and to introduce as little as possible any researcher bias from the authors. Finally, the first author designed the 10 selected dimensions of the PBL theoretical framework and meanwhile double checked the data collection process and the trustworthiness of all the data used and analysed them for the writing of this paper.

The 10 selected dimensions of PBL [2], therefore, were defined with certain varied implementations that aligned with the core components of PBL in the contemporary context of the Dracula Digital final competition as the sole case study, as follows. Figure 3 is a visual summary of the 10 selected dimensions of PBL that will be elaborated in this section.

The Dracula Digital competition presents a novel educational format for the application of PBL, as was already presented in the previous section. In this paper, the authors utilised value judgements to scrutinise the activities and elements found in the competition and map them onto the 10 selected dimensions, which ultimately confirmed the adherence to the three core principles of PBL [2]. To minimise bias, one author identified activities and/or elements in the competition that would fit one or more of the selected dimensions, and the other two authors were tasked to confirm or disprove the categorisation. In the current process, all authors agreed to the allocation of activities/elements to specified dimensions.

4. Results

An interpretation of Romanian and Bruneian cooperation at the Dracula Digital competition 2022 as a PBL project can be described as follows by framing all the findings into the 10 PBL dimensions presented in the above section. Some transcript excerpts (texts emphasised in italics) from student interviews are included for each dimension discussion.

(1)

Problem selection: This dimension concerns what students need to know at the end of their learning process. The selection is not necessarily made by the teacher, it could even be a result of suggestions from students. However, it is worth mentioning that teachers facilitate the entire learning process, ensuring that the problem that was selected for focus is aligned with the curriculum goal and/or the design of the activity. In the case of the Dracula Digital competition, the main problems were solving all the artistic tasks and technical troubleshooting, as well as the cross-cultural communication difficulties during the collaborative and creative process for both the three Bruneian and three Romanian students. One Romanian student admitted that this is his first time working with foreigners, and one Bruneian student articulated the major challenges that the Bruneian trio faced:

“For the challenge here is we’re just a team of three, so finding people to act for us and the camera work, and then we also need to create a whole storyline in just four days, I think. So, it was a challenge for us, especially for the places, because we’re not familiar with Brasov, with this country.”

(Bruneian participant 1)

Such problems in the film-making practice, especially in an unfamiliar location, are complex and unclear but highly relevant to the next dimension—the problem’s purpose.

(2)

Problem purpose: This dimension concerns the content that students should acquire and is related to the problem selected. The purpose of the Dracula Digital competition was outright and clear: the three Bruneian and three Romanian students needed to team up to make a 3 min short film by using a smartphone camera and attempt to win the Dracula Digital Trophy 2022. This straightforward purpose crucially hinged on whether the team of the above students could solve all the complex, sometimes unpredictable, artistic and technical problems in the production process. This is precisely the ultimate goal of all kinds of media production education, which is highly aligned with the focus of most PBL projects on questions or problems that “drive” students to encounter the central concepts and principles of a discipline. As Thomas (2000) noted, projects must be designed to connect activities with the conceptual knowledge that the PBL approach aims to develop. From the outset, both the Bruneian and Romanian students knew their purpose for conducting the project, and they also knew the importance of planning to achieve their artistic purpose. As Bruneian participant 2 claimed,

“The filming process was very smooth, but the challenging part for us was the planning part. That’s the hardest part.”

(Bruneian Participant 2)

Two Romanian students also mentioned how they assisted the Bruneian collaborators with location scouting:

“…exploring the streets and the people living here in Brasov, because they’re very welcoming and pleasant.”

(Romanian participant 1)

(3)

The nature of educational objectives and control over selection: This dimension considers the alignment of the selected problem and purpose, as well as the overall objective of the course. It also concerns the decision-making procedure, identifying who is in control of deciding the learning activities. The Bruneian students enrolled in two modules, respectively, the Short Filmmaking and Transmedia Production modules, and were assigned to a total of seven production crews (three members in each crew) based on voluntary groupings to participate in the preliminary competition; the successful submitters of a three-minute short film received extra credits for the respective module on which they were enrolled. Only one crew, whose short film was selected by the director of Dracula Film Festival 2022, went to Brasov, Romania, representing Brunei and teaming up with three Romanian counterparts to compete in the final stage of the Dracula Digital 2022. The educational objective here was to hone the students’ production skills based on the knowledge they had learnt in class and nurture their ability to work collaboratively with creative peers to achieve an artistic goal. As Bruneian participant 2 reiterated,

“That’s the hard part for us, planning. It’s worth it. We believe that it is important to have very proper planning.”

(Bruneian participant 2)

In response to the above reiteration, Romanian participant 2 confirmed,

“The script was very good, and the planning was also very good…I saw the finished product, it was very good and interesting.”

(Romanian participant 2)

To achieve this objective, the joint team of students needed to know how to control the creative process without going awry and how to make a series of creative decisions on which elements should be prioritised over others within a limited timeframe (72 h).

(4)

The nature of the task: This dimension outlines the relevant skillsets and tasks to achieve the educational objectives. This was another ambiguous dimension in the case of the Dracula Digital competition, which required students to learn on their own by using their pragmatic skills and solving a slew of artistic tasks and troubleshooting technical challenges to complete their creative process, as well as to achieve the educational objectives for both themselves and their teachers. As Thomas (2000) noted, PBL projects involve students in a “constructive investigation” [65]; Dracula Digital was a goal-directed process for all participants, involving inquiry, knowledge building, and practical resolution. The structured format, which included three designated production days, three keywords revealed at the opening gala of DFF, and two programmed workshops over the course of three full working days, succeeded in facilitating the transformation and construction of knowledge. All the activities of the project were manageable for the students to execute and accomplish within the required 72 h by using their acquired techniques and skills (especially for the Bruneian students) and learning more through such an exercise process (for both Bruneian and Romanian students). One Bruneian student explained how she used nuanced technical knowledge for the short film’s soundtrack design:

“We don’t know how to do Foley (sound effects), so we have to search for copyright-free songs or audios from the internet. So, we have to go through each of the lists of audios to make sure that the audio actually matches with our action. I think that is really hard to match because I was quite sensitive to audio, so I would actually find something that is really specific or something really close to it.”

(Bruneian participant 3)

Being an amateur actor, who played the protagonist in the co-produced short film, Romanian participant 2 thus described working with his Bruneian peers as follows:

“It was difficult because they were more professional than us.”

(Romanian participant 2)

Bruneian participant 2 commended his Romanian collaborators:

“For us, when the filming starts, the actors are very helpful, I would say. So, the filming process was very smooth.”

(Bruneian participant 2)

(5)

The presentation of the problem: This dimension concerns two tasks, the identification and resolution of a problem, as well as the acquisition of knowledge along the process. Learners experienced real-life constraints that professionals in the field are often subjected to, such as limited time and inadequate information available. The six students, who majored in Media Productions (Brunei) and Digital Media (Romania), worked together professionally to make a three-minute short film with a smartphone camera to experience real-world production demands—from writing a solid script, making a viable production plan and scouting locations, to finishing filming and editing, and then submitting their end product to the online Dracula Digital Final Competition submission outlet within 72 h. It was a series of problem-identifying and problem-solving tasks, which made the learning process, sometimes, more painstaking and memorable.

“I was very, very tired that night. We finished at 3:30 AM. It was a lot of work,’ Romanian participant 1 stated. ‘We were all very worn out. But as the director, I tried to lift the mood for the rest of us, but I was also tired myself.”

(Bruneian participant 1)

All the mistakes the students made in solving the problems and all the difficulties they conquered during the production and collaboration process become a series of invaluable pragmatic learning opportunities to gain knowledge and techniques that they may apply beyond the classroom.

(6)

Problem format: This dimension concerns the number of sessions students are provided to reach the learning objectives. In terms of classes, it could be a 14-week session, which is equivalent to one semester in UBD; however, since the extra credits set for both the Short Film Making and Transmedia Production modules at UBD only cost 10 per cent of the coursework because of the required short-format productions, the sessions provided to the participatory students to finish their productions are much more intense and limited within one or two weeks. The three students selected for the final competition had three more days to work with their Romanian peers to finish another 3 min short film in Brasov, Romania, through an entirely new PBL process. The formats of all the problems facing the Bruneian and Romanian students jointly participating in the Dracula Digital final competition were realistic, not school-like, as encountered through the designed topics, tasks, and student roles, as well as their genuine practical experience. Contributing to this realistic dimension were the collaborators (Romanian students as collaborators and Bruneian students as the main playmakers), the tangible end product created, and the audiences for their product. The criteria for judging the competition were also well-defined, with an experienced jury panel judging for both the preliminary and final competition, presenting a high professional standard and real-life challenges for all the participating students within the highly competitive context of a well-known film festival. Moreover, the competition organisers facilitated three sessions of online masterclasses offered by experienced film makers for all the participating teams in the final competition to help them familiarise themselves with the competition format and the common problems they might face during the 72 h competition period. The joint team of Romanian and Bruneian students, like other finalist teams, benefited massively from attending the above masterclasses.

(7)

Process followed: This dimension concerns how learners carry out their learning. The learners can undergo the PBL process individually at the initial start of the process, and later they are expected to work with a teacher or in small groups. The configuration can vary according to the tasks. For the Dracula Digital competition participants in UBD, most of the process was completed by the seven three-member crews as independent learners. The lecturer was only involved with the initial introduction of the overall competition, an explanation of how to earn the extra credits, and the organisation of the production crew formations based on the voluntary grouping principle. While competing in the final stage of the Dracula Digital 2022, the lecturers from both sides only facilitated the formation of the cross-cultural joint crew, by introducing the three Bruneian students to their three Romanian peers. The majority of the PBL process was experienced and completed by the six students themselves, collaboratively. One of the lecturers documented their entire PBL process and made a short documentary film titled A Journey to Brasov (9 min), which was screened at the opening night of following year’s Dracula Film Festival, kicking off the Dracula Digital 2023 final competition. Both lecturers avoided intervening in the joint team’s creative process, to keep the competition process and result fair and objective. Therefore, the joint team finished their short film production independently and solved all the troubleshooting problems themselves; the feeling of the entire process, however, were somewhat different for Bruneian and Romanian students because of the different learning stages they were in. The three Bruneian students were all seniors, while their Romanian peers were all freshers at the competition time.

“It’s not something new for us because, for our previous production, we also did it without knowing what time it was, whether it was morning or night. We just continued doing and doing (on our project). But I think for our Romanian friends…”

(Bruneian participant 3)

“It was pretty tiring; I’m not going to lie. But it was enjoyable for me. It was a new experience, and I learned a lot about acting as well from them, pretty much how to express more feelings through movements.”

(Romanian participant 2)

(8)

Resources available: This dimension helps identify the resources that learners need to solve the problem that has been identified. Resources could include peers’ knowledge, expert advice, academic articles, etc. This dimension proved to be the most advantageous for the UBD student participants, who all had access to university production facilities, and some of them even owned their own high-quality production equipment for both filming and editing and had theoretical and pragmatic production knowledge learnt from the media production modules they had previously taken. For the joint production crew attending the final competition, the three senior Bruneian students majoring in media production provided most of the production expertise, experience, and skills, while the three freshers from Romania, as Brasov locals, contributed their knowledge of location scouting and their performances in leading roles to the success of the 3 min short film. As a senior media production student, Bruneian participant 3 specified that they decided to search for copyright-free songs or audio from the internet as the main soundtrack strategy, instead of Foley production, due to their unfamiliarity with the facilities and the timeline consideration. The aforementioned three masterclasses offered by the organisers during the competition period were also available resources, since they were very helpful for all the finalist teams in identifying, analysing, and solving some commonly encountered problems during their production process.

(9)

Role of the teacher: This dimension concerns the role of the teacher in the PBL process, and in most cases, it is preferable for the teacher to take on the facilitator’s role to maximise the learners’ opportunities to learn through the resolution of problems. The teacher would then be a figure who enhances the learning process and corrects misconceptions, should there be any. In the case of the Dracula Digital 2022, as was earlier elaborated about the process followed, both lecturers from Brunei and Romania indeed played the role of facilitators to motivate the six students to team up, solve and troubleshoot the problems, and accomplish their artistic tasks from preproduction, production, and postproduction, to the submission of their end product independently. Except for introducing the three Bruneian students to their three Romanian peers, the two teachers rarely interrupted the six students’ creative process, since they both believed that the students would learn the most from the mistakes they made during the production process, hence maximising the educational objectives of the learning process. Another reason for both lecturers avoiding intervening in the creative process, as mentioned previously, was to maintain the competition process and result being as fair and objective as possible.

(10)

The demonstration of learning: This dimension concerns the assessment, which is a familiar concept when it comes to formal learning in educational institutions. This final dimension involved two layers of assessment for the UBD participatory works: the first was the respective marks/grades for the seven three-minute short films evaluated under the scope of the two aforementioned UBD modules; the second layer of assessment was the selection process from the jury panel of the Dracula Digital 2022 for both the preliminary and final competition. The short film that was jointly produced by both the Bruneian and Romanian students went through the above two evaluation processes and the assessment result may have differed under the two evaluative scopes. Although their short film did not win the Dracula Digital 2022 final competition, as per Bruneian participant 2, the jury recognised their creative efforts and gave them very constructive feedback:

“After we talked to the jury, they said they liked the film and the idea. They like we tried to interpret it (key words) from a different perspective. They give us good feedback.”

(Bruneian participant 2)

Other than the jury and teachers’ evaluations, the participating students in the joint production team also expressed some self-evaluations to demonstrate what they had learnt through the PBL experience of the Dracula Digital 2022 final competition:

“Firstly, I was very shy and I didn’t think I would like it, but it was actually very fun and interesting. It’s like I smashed a button…I feel like I’ve evolved. I’m not that shy anymore.”

(Romanian participant 3)

“Going to Romania itself, it really opens our minds and opens our eyes to see a bigger picture…I think it’s a huge eye-opener. Maybe I would like to bring some of it back to Brunei.”

(Bruneian participant 2)

“Well, it was a very pleasant experience and kind of a different experience for me because it was my first time working with foreign nationals, and it was a truly exchange of cultures and experiences. I’m very glad I had the opportunity to work with the Bruneian students because they taught me a lot about filming, acting, and directing.”

(Romanian participant 1)

A visual representation of how the many elements of the Dracula Digital competition fit into the 10 selected PBL dimensions is provided in Figure 4. The facilitator dimension (in one of the left circles) includes the three professional film makers who offered the three masterclasses about smartphone film-making and acting for screen during the competition period, as well as the two lecturers from the respective Romanian and Bruneian universities.

The findings also revealed that both Romanian and Bruneian students demonstrated high levels of creativity and collaboration in their respective and joint projects. The Romanian students were used to working with more structured projects with clear guidelines, while the Bruneian students were used to working based on semi-structured or even unstructured tasks with the least guidance, due to the specificity and hands-on principle of their media production modules that involve a greater motivation to exert their creativity and more independent self-learning. There were such differences, perhaps, also because the three Bruneian students participating in the Dracula Digital 2022 were all seniors, while their three Romanian peers were all freshers. The Bruneian students, therefore, had learnt more audiovisual production techniques and skills, thus familiarising themselves with the short film production process and knowing better how to solve the production problems when they arose. The Romanian students from UniTBv were all first-year freshers with only three weeks of university experience. As students enrolled in the Digital Media Programme at UniTBv, they were scheduled to learn TV Production, TV Editing, and Digital Media Production courses in their second year of study, according to the programme structure. Although they had less production knowledge and less production experience at the time of the joint short film production, they did substantial work in assisting with location scouting and performing leading characters in the short film, while learning very solid, hands-on production skills from their three UBD senior peers. Despite these differences and the minor challenges that both the groups of UBD and UniTBv students faced in terms of cultural differences, language barriers, and communication issues while working within a multicultural team, all of them became active participants in the learning process in this project.

Burn and Durran (2007) elaborated the combined result of producing media texts and engaging analytical readings based on their case study on a group of Year 9 UK students using the footage from Hitchcock’s classic horror film Psycho (1960) to make a trailer for their targeted audiences [66]. For the group of Bruneian and Romanian students competing the Dracula Digital 2022 final, they adopted a non-linear narrative structure, enhanced by intense flashback scenes to interpret the three key words from a very different perspective from other groups of finalists. Their creative effort received the jury’s recognition and constructive feedback, as per Bruneian participant 2. Moreover, both trios enjoyed the whole creative process and experienced the unforgettable pleasure of creativity and cross-cultural collaboration, which was evidenced by the statement from Romanian participant 2: “But it was enjoyable for me”. Their experience, therefore, resonates with Burn and Durran’s conclusion about the similar process of “conceptualising horror” and that of creative production. “Both are intellectual processes, producing new ideas; both are affective, combining the pleasure of viewing horror with the pleasure of creating new moving image texts” [66].

The screengrab of the documentary A Journey to Brasov (2023, 9 min, dir. Yong Liu) in Figure 5 shows the friendship firmly bonded within a short period of 72 h between the three UBD students and their three Romanian peers from UniTBv, when the hosts bade farewell to their guests for their returning trip back to Brunei. In the Islamic sultanate Brunei, people do not very often adopt physical contact to show the close connection and relationship between friends and even family members in their daily life, while Romanian people belong to Latin culture: thus, hugging is a very often gesture between close friends and families. Since the two groups of students had worked together closely and harmoniously, day in and day out, over the past three days, to achieve the same creative goal—to make a 3 min short film and submit it to the final competition website before the deadline—all the language barriers and cultural differences had been conquered by their mutual effort to understand each other. Although their co-produced short film did not win the Dracula Digital 2022 trophy, a close friendship and some personal bonds between them had been gradually established and formed during the PBL creative process, which made their farewell hugging so touching as a natural emotional expression. The six students’ cooperation in making a short film to compete in the Dracula Digital 2022 final, therefore, became another strong footnote to substantiate some of the previous research results that intercultural engagement in PBL settings is instrumental in nurturing the cross-cultural communication competence and mutual respect of students from different cultural backgrounds.

5. Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research Directions

The present article has proven that the Dracula Digital competition is indeed a PBL approach to learning, as it satisfies the dimensions of PBL outlined by Charlin, Mann, and Hansen (1998) [2] and is student-driven to a significant degree as stated in Thomas (2000) [65]. This principle was demonstrated from the beginning of the students’ participation, when they were given three keywords to be incorporated in their visual products, without mandating predetermined outcomes or paths for the participants. Along the way, students encountered issues akin to real-life production processes and made mistakes that they had to remedy and address; as this was still an educational approach, students were assessed for their work both by the teachers and the expert judges of the Digital Dracula competition. As a PBL project, the Dracula Digital competition incorporated a high degree of student autonomy, choice, unsupervised work time, and responsibility, far more than traditional instruction and conventional projects.

This study also paves the way for new research directions at the intersection of extracurricular projects, PBL, short film production, and film festivals for students as educational and multi-competence development tools. One direction could be the comparative analysis of the effectiveness of the PBL competencies developed in short film production across various educational disciplines (medical education, language learning, and environmental studies) compared with students from media or media-related programmes to identify commonalities and differences in outcomes.

Another research direction is to further develop our research cooperations on Bruneian and Romanian students competing collaboratively in future editions of the Dracula Digital, observe, and analyse their creative process through the ‘Four-C model of creativity’, and discuss their PBL experiences in terms of Pro-C, Little-C, or Mini-C creativity [67,68]. In addition, more research may be focused on integrating e-learning components into the PBL collaboration between Romanian and Bruneian students, considering the increased significance of e-learning in response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic [69].

A limitation of this study was that there was a lack of focus on the teacher’s role in the educational approach. Thus, a more thorough investigation of the teachers’ role and the intervention in facilitating students’ learning and project success would shed a potentially valuable insight, because the teacher’s role has considerable underlying influence on all the dimensions of PBL discussed in this paper. On another note, when investigating the effectiveness of PBL approaches, it is also important for future directions in PBL research to assess different student engagement strategies and explore factors that could influence student engagement and satisfaction in PBL-based film production projects in curricular PBL initiatives versus extracurricular ones. Furthermore, other than the cross-cultural dimension crystalised by the Digital Dracula competition, it would also be worth examining the applicability and effectiveness of short film production as PBL projects in more diverse cultural and educational contexts, assessing other crucial factors such as cultural values, educational systems, technological infrastructures, etc.

These future research suggestions aim to deepen the understanding of how PBL and extracurricular projects, e.g., short film productions, can enhance students’ learning, engagement, and societal impact, whether in the context of a competition programme in a film festival or curricular and extracurricular activities without competitive pressures.