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Educational Collaboration

In iFixit’s success they have chosen to partner with almost 100 universities to give students real world experience on repair and technical writing. Since the inception of this practice, over twenty-eight thousand students have had the opportunity to write repair and troubleshooting guides, with over fifty thousand manuals being posted by students alone. Students utilizing this opportunity are given direct guidance from iFixit's educational page (edu.ifixit.com) and their technical writing team. Students participating in iFixit educational collaborations are commonly in a technical discipline (Engineering, Technical Writing, Computer Science, etc.) and are exposed to a course such as Technical Writing in their curriculum. A project such as this has immeasurable value for students in these disciplines, as in the technology field, it is extremely common for professionals to write very detailed documentation for their company for product creation. It is also common for professionals to write very general documentation for the consumer to operate, repair, and troubleshoot a product.

The educational collaboration consists of five main modules. The first is “Getting Started”. In this milestone, students are prompted to create their iFixit accounts, and, with their instructor’s assistance, are placed into teams and select or are assigned a device for their project. Once teams are assigned, students create a submit a project proposal, and send it to the technical writing team at iFixit.

The first official module is “Milestone 1”. In this milestone, students conduct research on their selected or assigned device, gathering as much information as possible on common issues, to use in their troubleshooting page, the next aspect of Milestone 1. Students are to compose a troubleshooting page and submit the draft to the iFixit technical writing team.

The second is “Milestone 2”. In this milestone students create the page for their device. This page includes photographs of the device, a section for troubleshooting, background information, technical specifications, and any additional information are created for each topic. As is common with all milestones, once finished, students will submit a draft of their device page to the iFixit technical writing team.

The third is “Milestone 3”. In this milestone students compose a repair guide for the device; how to replace broken components in the device. Utilizing clear photographs and annotations, students will write these repair guides for others to have access to. Once finished, students will submit their draft repair guides to the iFixit technical writing team.

The final is “Milestone 4”. In this milestone, students are finishing their projects, reassembling devices, finalizing all guides, and reviewing all of their work. Once everything has been finalized and double checked, students are to submit their work to the iFixit technical writing team so that their work may be published on the website.