Output Packet Pro Review

Main Advisor and OP Reviewer: Laura Kaestele
Associate Name: Carolina-Therese Winter
Output Packet #: 2
Program: Bachelor of Science
Phase/ALC: PreCAP-ALC1
Date Submitted: June 22nd 2016
Date Reviewed: June 29th 2016
Mark: 64
Grade: C
Time Spent on Review: 3 hrs + 0.5 for review forms

Dear Carolina,

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to read your Output Packet 2 and learn more about your project work and action learning in natural bee-keeping, ecological construction and soil building. I appreciate all the energy and time you put into creating the report and additional documentation as well as your efforts and learning steps in design application, project and time management. Beautiful to see the joy you have in working with your hands, practical skills, nature connection and experiential learning. I am looking forward to reading about your next project(s), witnessing feedback integration and empowering you to grow through your work!

My review is broken into these sections:
1. PoDAPO Evaluation Form
2. Comments Per Section

Required Next Step: None

Recommended Next Steps: 
•	Add your OP 2 Exploring Regenerative Methods to your profile page on Mahara to share with everyone in the Gaia community
•	Document and share your guild and/or buddy meeting notes in the next OP as well as engaging in the GaiaU community like joining Radio Calls or giving a presentation
•	Keep it manageable and navigate the learning edge. Don't overwhelm yourself with project, study or design work. Focus on 1-3 projects for one OP and go into more depth.

I respect your integrity in managing your pathway. I'm glad to be your advisor!

Cheers, 
Laura

OP REVIEW

1. PoDAPO EVALUATION FORM (attached)

2. COMMENTS PER SECTION (see below)

COMMENTS PER SECTION

Title and Summary
Great title and header, eye-catching photos of the land and yourself working, makes me curious
Helpful mindmap as table of contents and the guidelines for readers
Language errors „but more easier to follow“ and „buttons above to for navigation in this OP“ or alternatively „to navigate this OP“ and logic „otherwise you can click“ shouldn't it say „can't click“
“Driven by the inspiration to let work nature work” and “use nature's full potential”
“I represent in the Core Report my first small projects”
“exploring future-compliant, integral human and agricultural-based systems” sounds more like the strategic goal for your pre-capstone, maybe even the entire, Bachelor program and not just OP 2..?

I think this is too much information written too lengthy about meta-, meso- and micro-projects I would encourage you to be more concise (make it short, direct and “crisp”) and just write your overall vision/goal and then about the three projects bee-keeping, building skills and soil building naming their sub-projects – design and learning cycles.
Choose consistently what font type you want to use and rather not change in between, also decide whether you want to write all page title in capitals and then follow through “Core Report” and “time and promise Management”
“Click here to go to the top of the page” might be more helpful for reading to have a link from the bottom of this page to the top of the NEXT page – what do you think?

Project Descriptions
Nice framing of your project work through the message “think global, act local” and the context of globalization and ecological regeneration – great link back to your OP 1B LIPD and learning goals
This place fits better to explain the different project levels (and rather keep it simple in the summary) excellent to use a mindmap here, but please be clear and consistent with wording e.g. meso-project in the text and macro-projects in the mindmap
From my personal understanding a “project” is the (collaborative) energy put into completing a set of actions running over a specific period of time with the intention to achieve certain goals – in light of that description another possibility would be to call the “meta-project” a “strategic goal”, “action learning fields” instead of “meso-projects” and “micro-projects” would be left to be just “projects” - what do you think – brings clarity and simplicity for me, but completely your choice

Well done for actively experimenting with the new design process of Appreciative Inquiry, sharing your successes and challenges with application – good to link supportive evidence directly
What was the un/conscious intention of using a design process for your meso-projects? 
I think you are on the edge of over-designing here considering my previous thinking about what a project is, you could simply define “meso-projects” as action learning areas, share goals you have and maybe more about the action learning methodology (Kolb Model) itself
Obviously you can design an action learning process too, but this is mostly covered in your LIPD

Again my call for simplicity, on the second page you share project descriptions, so that makes three times for presenting each project: 1) as part of the summary, 2) in the project descriptions and 3) on each project page itself in great detail – I would invite you to skip the project descriptions and rather integrate that information in the beginning of the project page or leave it if that would be redundant (and not new) information – be simple and clear! :) 
Otherwise I love the structure of summarizing each of the three areas with a bit of context, purpose, project activities and photos
Project: Natural Bee-keeping
I really appreciate the structure you chose for presenting each project including a process description, primary achievements, outcomes, next steps and new goals – this is makes up for an engaging and informative reading experience
I feel sad that you have so many projects packed into one OP that there is no possibility to go into further depth and detail about each one of them, the design process, learning and outcomes – I would love to hear about each project and for you to focus on just a few (1-3) projects for each OP

What is your role and responsibility in each of these projects? Did you participate in, organize, support or lead the permaculture planning workshop for creating the bee biotope? Do you self-organize, work in a team (from Lebensgarten) or with a single person who gives you instructions?
Again about the sun hive, was weaving one part of a workshop or teamwork? I would love to read more about the rapid learning cycle and your experiences with it during the project activities

Great integration of the ArCEA process for learning about theoretical knowledge – What theories did you look at? What is your critical thinking on bee keeping? What was the result of your learning and research? How do you integrate that into your actions? 
What is the evidence or documentation or results of your research and applying ArCEA?
Please at least explain the words behind an acronym like ArCEA Ar = Active reading, C = Critique, E = Expand and A = Act and then refer for more details to an optional section
I like that you added a mindmap about “What goals of the LIPD were met?” maybe you could create one single mindmap for all projects and include it in the pathway reflections as here it is not explained and I assume also optional material

Project: Practical Skill-building
Nice start into the greenhouse project, talking about your role as an active support person, co-leading the group and not involved, but informed about the design – this is the kind of information I was looking for in the previous project descriptions
Yes, also more details on the design process as the action learning cycle, what you did and did not do and how that went for you, the group and the project
What were the consequences of not going through the learning phase of the process? Why is this important for a successful implementation and happy group?
Is the building process completed or still in progress? What have you done already? Who and how many people are in the building group? What materials (natural?) are used? What do you do to lead the group process and coordinate building activities?

Project: Soil Building
Interesting to read how your intuitive learning process brought you to obtaining ingenious micro-organisms to create Bokashi – why did you choose to work with Bokashi for increasing soil fertility?
Beautiful to see the power of plans (learn about soil fertility and Bokashi) plus the adaptability, to re-evaluate and change plans when (it is needed) new information presents itself!
Excellent strategy to start where your strengths and abilities are in the Kolb Model and then move from there into new areas of learning and to see that you already did do some research on theories (AC) and also observed the IMO (RO), so keep expanding and learning

Again what is your role in this project (leading, collaborating, learning, supporting) – self-organized, alone or together with other people?
When you talk about terra preta – what exactly do you mean? A re-creation of the ancient terra preta soil in the rain-forest, a local adaptation or simply activated bio-char (or charcoal)?
I think a little bit of information and context would be helpful for all readers who don't know terra preta and might wonder what is terra preta, the heap and why do you need charcoal...?
Awesome that you enjoyed working and learning in all those projects, that you are satisfied with creating this OP2 and that you walk step-by-step towards achieving your larger strategic goals
Consider including a brief summary, final thoughts, key outcomes, essential un/leanrings, appreciations, new goals or next steps into the conclusion – to give it a bit more content

Pathway Reflections 
Useful context information to read that you do an internship at the permaculture site and engaged in most of the learning and working opportunities offered to you. I hear that it is challenging and chaotic for you to work on different projects and design processes at the same time – What would be practical ways for you to have more clarity, focus, consistency and purpose in your projects? What work experiences do you want to weave into your OPs (doesn't have to be all of them)? 

Well done for re-negotiating one of your LIPD goals and projects and adapting it to meet your needs in terms of workload and the community's needs to contribute to the reed bed system instead. I enjoy the practical next steps you laid out for what to do differently for the next OP
Also three powerful and insightful key un/learnings, I hope they serve you well in navigating your learning pathway and future project work
Great use of the Kolb Model for tracking your action learning and the flexible implementation plan for project progress – happy to see these tools from you LIPD in action and evaluation

Managing Time and Managing Promises 
Well done for using a combination of time planning and task managing tools to do your project work, it seems that there was a challenge of time management (constraints), project work and conscious design and learning with new steps happened – let's talk about this more in advising
Good personal observations and reflections on managing promises and how you react to stressful situations, keep a work attitude and your dedication to keep commitments

Supporting Evidence 
Did you use two design processes for you OP? Appreciative Inquiry and GaSADIE?
I like the basemapping and zoning, but impossible to read, include a larger image or external link with image to zoom in – nice digiphon and list of tech tools and platforms you used
Well done for adding supportive evidence, process materials and outcomes for each of the three action learning projects – for the annotated resource review I would encourage you to give comments about the usage and value of these resources in addition to naming and linking them
Would be great to see some documented buddy or guild meetings in the next OP as well as further active engagement in the GaiaU community e.g. Radio Calls, presentation or collaboration

OP Review Forms
Great work with the OP self review and applying the PoDAPO criteria to evaluate your own performance and creation of the OP2, I appreciate your realistic appraisal of how things went and would could be done differently the next time. I really see the efforts you put into expanding your design skills and consciously applying a whole lot of different frameworks for you projects, hope you learned a lot and can build on these concrete experiences and experiments. I would encourage you to add more suggestions for improvement and ideas how you could grow in each of the PoDAPO criteria to get more value from this evaluation for yourself. Please label the OP review documents more clearly with date (yymmdd), OP number and (initials and last) name e.g. 160623_OP2_Self_Eval_CWinter.xls that helps a lot for other reviewers to navigate
Good peer review for Sonita with appreciative feedback and the more you master OP creation and understand PoDAPO I am looking forward to seeing more expansive and constructive feedback