In recent years, the technological development of electronic devices has led to a rapid increase in the amount of electronic waste, not only in industrialised countries but also in emerging and developing countries, which is largely disposed of improperly and causes massive damage to the environment and people. The enormous increase in these mountains of waste is partly due to the phenomenon of obsolescence. In addition to planned or condoned obsolescence, in which the rapid wear and tear of important components leads to an avoidable reduction in service life for economic reasons, the ever faster succession of innovations is causing an increasing proportion of functional obsolescence because older and new devices and functions are no longer compatible. In addition to these forms of unsustainable development caused by producers, consumers are also making a decisive contribution to exacerbating the problem by disposing of fully functional technical artefacts. The phenomenon of obsolescence is accompanied by a decline in awareness of the possibility of repairing defective items and extending their useful life in this way. Whereas just a few decades ago, repair was an area relevant to education and the concern for maximising service life was taken for granted, today these topics play no role either in general education or in the awareness of children and young people.

This is where the project comes in. With this project, the Technical Education working group at the University of Oldenburg, in co-operation with the Computing Science degree programme, aims to implement repair as an educational task in technology and Computing Science lessons in general education schools. The didactic and methodical preparation of the repair tasks for the classroom should, on the one hand, help to enable pupils to identify and analyse sources of error in a professional manner and to restore the functionality of technical artefacts. On the other hand, analysing how they work should contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex problems associated with their manufacture, use and disposal. For this reason, methods and materials are to be developed that address the ethical, ecological, economic and political implications associated with repair and obsolescence in an interdisciplinary manner in the spirit of education for sustainable development. The project is divided into three phases. In the first phase, the initial development and implementation of concepts, methods and materials will take place at the University of Oldenburg in the Engineering and Computing Science degree programmes in order to incorporate subject-specific perspectives from both areas and closely interlink the interdisciplinary aspects. Students from both subjects will be involved in the development and testing of the materials by initially testing and documenting their own repairs in their modules. Subsequently, projects and teaching sequences will be carried out in student laboratories and schools, focussing on different aspects of the topic. The second phase serves to adapt, expand and differentiate the concepts and materials by the participating universities. To this end, the materials and experiences will be made available to the project partners in a transfer process and implemented in the degree programmes of the cooperating universities. In a third phase, companies and organisations will be involved in the process in order to develop excursions together with them that shed light on the areas of repair and recycling from a vocational perspective and that are suitable for integration into technology and computer science lessons as part of academic appointments.

Nine degree programmes from eight universities and so far eight schools in the Oldenburg region are involved in the project. Once the project has been completed, it is planned to continue and consolidate the implementation in teacher training programmes and in the subjects of Computing Science and Technology.