Output Packet Pro Review

Main Advisor and OP Reviewer: Laura Kaestele
Associate Name: Carolina-Therese Winter
Output Packet #: 1
Program: Bachelor of Science
Phase/ALC: PreCAP-ALC2
Date Submitted: June 22nd 2017
Date Reviewed: July 9th 2017
Mark: 1
Grade: Pass
Time Spent on Review: 3 hrs + 0.5 for review forms

Dear Carolina,

Congratulations for completing the LIPD for your second Action Learning Cycle with Gaia U! Thanks for your ideas, designs, and engagement in shaping your future un/learning. I know how difficult this process was at times considering the massive life transition and uncertainty you currently face and think you have beautifully embraced the change while staying true to yourself. Main areas to consider for improvement are planetary context and transformation, field assessment, critical evaluation, collaboration, professional development and tracking of active experiments. I feel happy to see you step up your work and skill-flexes in the fields of design application, project management, and tracking and encourage your further development. 

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

Required Next Steps: 
 •	Ensure sufficient proof-reading and editing to improve language and writing quality.
 •	Output goal articulation and direct tracking related to content, presentation, and process as well as articulation and evaluation of project-related SMART goals.
 •	Add field assessment, critical evaluation of research and your contribution to the next OP.

Recommended Next Steps: 
 •	Distinguish project and OP process in your design, engagement, and documentation.
 •	Participation in the GaiaU community, contribution, peer support and project collaboration. 

I value your enthusiasm and integrity as an action learner. I feel glad to be of service as your main advisor and accompany your next action learning cycle!

Cheers, 
Laura

OP REVIEW

1.	PoDAPO EVALUATION FORM (attached)
2.	COMMENTS PER SECTION (see below)
COMMENTS PER SECTION

Specification and Abstract
 •	Clear and concise guidelines for readers with specific information on how to interact with technology and navigate the output packet pages. 
 •	I believe in the abstract and specification you missed the words Output Packet (OP) in the first sentence otherwise the abbreviation OP does not make sense. 
 •	The summary of the LIPD and purpose statement bullet point present almost identical information, it would be helpful to distinguish more clearly between content and purpose.
 •	For the abstract, it helps to use the same names as the page titles themselves to avoid confusion, with page 3 being called „Year 2“.
 •	I think it would be great to mention the three-part structure of the OP with commentary, core report and supportive evidence and what each section contains.
 •	For the section on feedback integration I would like to see next time where this feedback comes from, what did you change and how exactly you attended to the feedback in this OP.

Project Design
�	The introduction provides a nice anchor to your life and pathway context. I would have liked to read more about why the LIPD is important in this stage of your program and how creating it challenges/support your life and learning pathway.
�	Part of the sentence missing again „helping groups and individuals make their dreams come true“ and I do not understand how DD helps for visionary initiation processes?
�	Good description of the three ethics in Dragon Dreaming – how are they relevant and applied in your LIPD? Brief project wheel and design stages description would be great to add a bit more information for each phase and what tools and techniques you have used.
�	For any graphical and visual materials, you include in your OP make sure to write the creator and external source or if you created it yourself to respect origon and copyright.
�	Excellent section on project management and tracking with an explanation of the Karrabirdt and how it works, unfortunately, I can not read anything in the image included.
�	A common grammar mistake I have seen several times in the report is not changing an adjective like strategic into an adverb when combined with a verb e.g. „work strategically“ not strategic or alternatively „work in a strategic way“.
�	In the reflections of the design process, I appreciate your perspective on why a strategic design process and clear planning tool is empowering for managing a project. Next time you could write more reflections on each design stage, how you applied DD and what you changed as well as application tips and best practices for others wanting to use DD. 

Vision, Skills and Interest 
 •	I do not really understand how the flood of information in today's world shapes your interests and it would be great to explain how this mindmap of interests is relevant for your LIPD and how it influences the pathway design.
 •	It is inspiring to read about the dream book you created and how the book „The Monk who sold his Ferrari“ shaped with activity. Please share more about how to create a dream book, as a best practice for other people to be inspired and do the same.
 •	Fantastic to see the result of your dream book being such strategic, long-term goals and I enjoy how there is necessity, purpose, and passion driving these three meta-goals. Powerful to see how you gained more clarity on your professional path to become 1) a natural health practitioner and herbalist and 2) a facilitator for sustainable learning :-)
 •	I appreciate a realistic appraisal of the skills you can develop this year considering your family and personal life situation. I would recommend you develop an effective and quantitative skill-flex tracker to assess the skill-level you are at now, to what level you wish to grow your skills by the end of the year and the growth value for every project/OP.
 •	In the evaluation section, you describe the process of how you have and will evaluate your life situation, in addition to linking the document for details, please add a short summary of main results and insights to the paragraph itself. Write about content, not just process.

Goals and Focus for the Year
�	The first hand-drawn image at the top of the page immediately caught my attention and I missed a few written words to explain what I am looking at, how it connects to the LIPD and what thinking or outcomes it visually presents.
�	When linking to additional, complementary materials that are still relevant to the core report I encourage you to share a summary of key outcomes, content, and insights as a short version of what you did so the reader can follow your process.
�	The same with the paragraph inspiration, thoughts, and plans, it is completely fine to not share all details of your process and activities, but please write core outcomes and thoughts, just mentioning what you did without it seems hollow as the content is missing.
�	Beautiful how you adapted the focus for the year to your current life situation of being pregnant and your interests in child care and natural healing and accepting this major life change and even beyond that embracing the opportunity and dedicating your project work to focus on these areas.
�	Your goals integrate well into your life situation and show a strategic, holistic nature, but what I am missing here are SMART targets and a break-down of large goals into smaller achievable goals and milestones that in turn can be used to track your progress.

Project & OP Planning
�	I appreciate you creating a timeline as a program overview with xmind and the way you have done it is rather long and fragmented. I would encourage you to shorten the timeline by eliminating empty branches and possibly combining 3-4 months into one section (a branch of the mind map) with then has sub-branches with the information.
�	Again the goals you describe are interesting and I am left wondering if they are specific enough and how you can track their achievement. How do you know you have built expert knowledge in the area of pregnancy, birth and time beyond? What does this mean? What are the basics of a natural health professional and how can you measure the achievement? 
�	Please include resource references in the footnotes and mention the source of visual materials that you add to the writing.
�	The project descriptions are inspirational and I love the personal touch and enthusiasm I feel through your words, also the OP related goals are clear and holistic considering mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects.
�	What I am missing here is clear information on what you want to include in the output content and key outcomes of your research, work and action learning you will write about.
�	How will you keep track of all those different set of goals, the general goals for the year, the goals for each OP in addition to the two hand-drawn goal graphics and the mindmap?
�	The goals you outline for each OP are diverse but all on a personal level. I encourage you to expand your perspective for project work, output writing and impact to consider peer, professional and planetary/political dimensions, also for project goals and outcomes.
�	Happy to read the the skill-flex advising session with Nicole was helpful and that as a result, you making efforts to become more specific and effective with goal setting, project management, and tracking. This links to previous comments I made, so great to hear you created more specific action steps and SMART goals and will use a tracking system with four individual spreadsheets for your projects, goals, design and skill development.
�	Great intention for dissemination using a personal blog. What are ways and media could you use for sharing your learning and project work with a wider audience?
�	How will you use multiple tracking systems and for ongoing progress tracking and evaluation and make sure to do it regularly and effectively? What are your intentions on timing and interventions for tweaking and changes? Any best practices?
�	Nice conclusion and congratulations for your progress and improvements in the field of design application and project tracking. Thanks for sharing what went well and what was challenging during the LIPD completion. 
�	What changed from your first phase writing the LIPD to the second phase, would be cool to see the evolution and changes made. How can you balance a clear structure with flexibility, so it is not a fixed but a liberating structure?

Reflections
�	The format of the first mind map does not make sense to me, it is super wide and not long enough to see everything at once, higher would work better.
�	I feel glad to read that you had a smooth, effective output production process, upload to Mahara and use of the Dragon Dreaming design framework. Great to see your previous work and efforts paying off that way!
�	I personally know how it feels to lead a life dominated by uncertainty, change and not knowing – Congratulations for facing that challenge, creating a learning design embracing the transition and for taking one little step at a time.
�	Good to read that you accept the extended time frame for completing the LIPD and submitting for pro review, it seems that the additional time allowed clarity to emerge. On that note, a reflection on timing, transitions and interventions would have been interesting.
�	In the section about what to do differently next time you outline new goals for the OP process, what I am missing here are practical next steps and/or active experiments for how you could improve in certain areas and realistically achieve these goals.
�	Seems that the highly planned, linear and steady step-by-step approach served you well for the LIPD project and maybe specifically in these uncertain times in your life – balance uncertainty and chaos on one side with more structure and stability on the other side.
�	I really appreciate the way you shared the un/learning commentary by comparing the old with the new working/thinking patterns with each other. Great perspective on limiting inner thinking pattern and the unlearning happening!

Supportive Evidence
�	So happy to see the buddy relationship with Mona is going on and that you are documenting that and started to enjoy the benefit of skill-flex advising sessions.
�	Extensive supportive documents for the design application, project work, and LIPD activities, well done for including these additional documents.
�	For the digiphon consider sharing about the technology and how you used / how it helped you create the LIPD and explain/highlight any new technology and best practices.
�	Good annotated resource review with about 25 different resource items and comments for each one of them. Please remember to add footnotes with the source and creator of visual imagery that you use in the output writing.