Program Highlights
In 2009, iFixit’s Technical Writing Program was introduced at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. Since its inception, more than 53,000 repair guides have been created by over 29,000 students from 99 universities across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Success comes from the innovative features of our program, which include the following:
Hands-on and project-based
Students get the opportunity to take apart real consumer electronics, gaining first-hand experience in writing technical repair manuals. Our program provides a meaningful opportunity for students to open up “black box” consumer electronics. This experience empowers students with the knowledge to troubleshoot, repair, and document devices in the future.
Real world
Students produce authentic documentation for the world to use. Their contributions provide free repair instructions that have been accessed by 140 million people. The program offers students concrete, published technical writing experience.
Impact driven
Like all things iFixit, the curriculum follows our strong commitment to ethics. The project reinforces the need to reuse and repair in a wasteful consumer age and encourages students to take personal responsibility for addressing the significant problem of e-waste. The iFixit curriculum focuses on repairing devices to keep them running longer, thus reducing the overall demand for devices and the amount of e-waste. This environmental cause motivates students and extends the impact of their projects far beyond the walls of the classroom.
Why does it matter? Check it out.
Hosted online
Instructors and students have access to the curriculum 24/7. Our field-tested curriculum and support materials, including all documentation, are always available via the internet. Everything you need is hosted right on our website.
Collaborative
The iFixit Technical Writing Program emphasizes collaboration among students who work in teams to create peer-edited technical documentation. The collaborative nature of our “Wikipedia-esque” guides allows for improvements and updates by the broader iFixit community, which creates accurate guides with longevity.
Dynamic
All great technical writing is user-friendly and dynamic. Our easy-to-use platform makes creating and contributing to guides simple. Our community is always growing and changing. Questions from users, updates to guides, and success reports are just some of the ways that guides on the iFixit platform are more than just printed pamphlets. These guides are living technical documentation.
Turn-key
This program can be integrated into a regular curriculum or used as a stand-alone project. Our all-inclusive program provides everything needed to implement the project, including devices and tools, an easy-to-use web-based platform, comprehensive documentation, video tutorials, grading rubrics, checklists, and resources to extend the project and connect it to an existing curriculum.
Supported
The technical writing team at iFixit provides support via email for any questions that instructors and students may have. We are committed to providing all the support required for the project's success.
Pedagogically sound
We've done our homework, and we know what works. We've thought long and hard about how to design a program that maximizes student success. Our project isn't just busy work—it is based on sound research and practices. For links to scholarship written about the program, check out our Research page.
No cost to participate
iFixit supplies all the materials necessary for undertaking the project. We ship devices and tools at the start of the project, and we make available all supporting resources at no cost to participants. Free support from staff is available at any time. When the project is finished, we cover the shipping costs for returning materials.
Feedback from pros
Students get to communicate with and receive feedback from iFixit's team of professional technical writers working in the field. Meaningful interaction with professionals throughout the project makes for an authentic learning experience in professional and technical communication.
Student Perspectives
What do students have to say?
How it Works
Students are broken into teams and given a device for which they create repair documentation. In addition to devices, iFixit provides each group with a general-purpose toolkit for disassembling the device. Students create a device background page, troubleshooting guide, and step-by-step guides for replacing the major components of the device. These guides include both text and images. After peer review, the guides are made public on iFixit.com for the world to use.
Need a clearer picture of how this works? Here are some sample student projects:
Who We Are and What We Do
iFixit was started in 2003 by Luke and Kyle in a dorm room at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Since then, we've grown a bit. iFixit now helps thousands of people repair their devices every day. Why do we do it? Because companies like Apple don't provide repair parts and documentation to end users. We believe everyone should have the right to maintain and repair their products.
In short, we want to fix the world, one device at a time. This video explains our motivation pretty well:
Interested?
Contact us! We’d love to talk to you about setting up a pilot program at your university. Send us an email: education[at]ifixit[dot]com.