Abstract—Situated in schools in Germany, the intercultural computer clubs “come_IN” offer a place for shared computer practice of children and adults. In this paper, we analyze the project work with children and adults in these clubs. Our in-depth analysis of positive and negative effects on two exemplary computer club projects provides us with a set of guidelines that may prove helpful for future project work with children and adults – in the clubs as well as in similar contexts. We also give an outlook on an online community platform called “come_NET” that is currently being developed to even support collaborative project work between the different clubs over their We also give an outlook on an online community platform called “come_NET” that is currently being developed to even support collaborative project work between the different clubs over their location distance. Our case study is grounded in quantitative and qualitative data on project participation, modes of interaction between the participants, description and analysis of the tools used and artifacts created.

Index Terms—Children, collaborative project work, computer clubs.

A. Weibert, T. von Rekowski and M.-A. Sprenger are with the University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany (e-mail: {firstname.lastname}@ uni-siegen.de).
B. R. Barricelli is with Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy(e-mail: barricelli@dico.unimi.it).

Cite: Barbara Rita Barricelli, Thomas von Rekowski, Mary-Ann Sprenger, and Anne Weibert, "Supporting Collaborative Project Work in Intercultural Computer Clubs," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 35-44, 2011.