A Service-Learning Collaborative Project in a Mechanical Engineering Technical Writing Class

In collaboration with iFixit, a company that describes itself as "a global community of people helping each other repair things," Cal State LA mechanical engineering students taking an upperdivision technical writing class designed and wrote repair manuals for older model cell phones and PDAs.The students worked in groups to photograph the procedures and write the repair steps.Then the groups "user tested" and edited each other's procedures before ultimately publishing them on iFixit's website.iFixit provided the cell phones and PDAs, along with lights for the camera work and toolkits to open and access the devices' components.During an initial classroom visit, a company representative showed the class a video of indigent scrappers working in an electronics waste site in Ghana, West Africa, where electronics, which contain many toxic and environmentally harmful substances, from the United States and elsewhere are dumped.The video showed local scrappers burning off plastics and other materials to retrieve copper and other metals.The video was sobering and inspired students to teach others to do simple repairs of these devices in order to extend their lifespan.iFixit is based in San Luis Obispo and was co-founded by two Cal Poly San Luis Obispo engineering students in 2003.The company is interested in collaborating further with engineering students to document repair procedures, many of which are deliberately not documented by manufacturers.Their motto is "right to repair."Student feedback on the project was highly positive and students can now claim authorship on their resume of a published repair guide as well as service-learning credit.Students expressed a sense of pride in having contributed to iFixit's global mission to "fix the world, one device at a time."