Facilitation in an Intergenerational Making Activity

Abstract

Intergenerational making activities provide an opportunity for family collaboration where parents and children learn together. We discuss the facilitative moves that emerged between researchers, parents, and children during a half-day making program where participants played and created games. Four families with a variety of knowledge of digital fabrication technologies participated in three activities: playing a variety of games, designing and making their own games using arts and crafts materials, and optionally utilizing digital fabrication tools to complete their games. We position traditional fabrication and digital fabrication as two different modalities of making. Accordingly, we examine the facilitative moves and behavioral shifts that emerge across the two modalities and as observed through qualitative analysis. This work contributes insights to the field on program structure and the ways formal facilitators and parents can sustain child engagement in a making workshop.