Associate Name: Nicole Vosper
Main Advisor and OP Reviewer: Jennifer Dauksha-English Morgan

Output Packet #:  	4	Year:  Capstone MSc
Date Submitted: June 5th, 2018
Date Reviewed: June 28th, 2018
Mark: Advisor (76) Self (70)
Grade: B
Time Spent on Review: 3.75 hrs

Dear Nicole,

Yes! What a wealth of insight and evidence around soil science and political agroecokogy. I love your take on the social sector. Wonderfully presented. You met your goals for this OP - congratulations. 

I’m so looking forward to checking out your blogs and website.

One more OP and your well on your way to an MSc degree.

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

Required next step: 
- Where is your peer review? Is it for James?
- No other requirements for OP 4.

Recommended next step:
- I provide requests inside the excel (under additional comments), and below highlighted in red. I hope you consider integrating some of this feedback into your OP 5. I will not be making any of my suggestions requirements. 
- I’m offering to do a draft review of your OP 5 if you’d like.

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

Cheers,
Jennifer

OP REVIEW-------------------------

1. EVALUATION FORM-------------------- 

(attached)

2. COMMENTS PER SECTION---------------

Commentary -
- I love the opening image. It’s such a great combination of engaging, natural, creative and professional.
- Fantastic subject - Political Agroecology. I’m really looking forward to reading what you have to offer. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to follow your work all of these years. You’ve really helped expand my own thinking in regards to interacting with science.
- Nice that you have the note to reader displayed for easy access. I think you need to include some reference to word count for the reviewers. I appreciate you noting what to read - however give us an idea of it’s size and breadth here in navigation rather than on the bottom of each page (helpful to integrate/plan from a pattern level). Maybe also note about columns on page 1. Do you want us to begin on the left? I think you could benefit from arranging this page in two types of content - OP related and pathway related.  Looking at a glance it seems very overplayed and to me, adds a layer of complexity in finding what I’m looking for as a reviewer (example - I want to just look at your OP design bits - but need to look at top of right column, mid right column, and mid left column.  Basically, I’m noticing that from my reviewer viewpoint, this OP landing page could use a bit more structure and context.  Adding a clear sense of where to begin and an overview of the content on this page might be helpful to add after navigation and before the map on contents.
- I like how you note why you are creating goals. I would like to hear a sentence about how you elected these goals and a sentence about how you intend to track them.
- Nice worldview statement - provides a lot of context about your point of view. Considering adding this to my portfolio page. Sidenote - I heard that Ireland just banned fracking! I like how you say this “is unashamedly based”.
- Digiphon - I like how you have t broken out into essential, technology and new tools.
- In the OP Overview you say OP Three - it should say OP four. Perhaps you mean third project?
- Powerful opening purpose statement for the degree pathway and OP itself.
- Suggestion - since your OPs are so well woven together - maybe add a sentence or two naming the previous projects and stating how they built on one another?
- In summary of contents, I would suggest you are clear that the reader is now reading the commentary. Add a note that says that the commentary is for tracking my learning and Gaia U reviewers (or something similar). I think that would help if you share it publicly.
- I love this concept of desire lines and want more context. You give an example but it’s still not entirely clear how you used this as a tool. Define pathway of least resistance. 
- Is graduating your end goal for choosing soil as a desire line, or is it to reduce stress, or both? I’m not certain as to how or why you came to the conclusion of your choice.
- Life update - you are amazing. I’m so wow’d that you were able to get your MSc this far after all of the set backs! I appreciate how balanced you are with seeing the big picture and tackling the details. 
- Wonderful evidence of your stellar tracking and time management systems.
- Would be great if you could add more of an assessment of skills in OP 5.
- Cool that the OP helped identify a professional niche that you feel passionate about (one too that hopefully will align with your self care).
- Now that we are both about to graduate, I am open to having seasonal or even monthly guild buddy support to keep the actions learning alive.
- You have this section on goals in the right column  that feels fragmented from the one on the left column - to me it would make more sense maybe to just have it in one place?
- Where did this feedback come from? I think your feedback section needs much more context. I’d like to see this more fully developed in OP 5.
- When you talk about dissemination as a strategy it sounds that it has not yet been implemented. I know that you’ve disseminated a ton of material! Can you not simply state a summary of outreach for this topic related to soil? Number of courses organized, blogs written, learning opportunities hosted?

Core Report -
- Again beautiful construction of the page with the mages running down the side. Lovely!
- I would suggest you again define Agroecology in your terms here in the introduction. 
- Tell us who Salvatore is to help anchor the quote. Ah, I see you do later in the section!
- Helpful description of political ecology.
- I like how you give examples of each type of degradation. Perhaps adding an example too of the complex thinking/analysis - like move a step beyond science and into practice/application. Have you used these techniques yourself?
- Focussing on human social influences - that’s clear and contextual. Great list of socio-economic factors. Did you come up with this list of aggravations yourself? When you close this section saying that they require biophysical interventions and re-design of society - can you give a quick example of one intersection? Adding more on what you mean by re-design of society would help here. 
- In the next section you say wholesale redesign of capitalist society.  What do you mean by wholesale? This is the second time you’ve brought up this redesign approach without leveling into your meaning. I would suggest you add a few sentences about changing worldviews (something more cultural/psychological/emotional). Or just note that you’ll be sharing more in xxx section. As you have it - I feel that it’s a huge topic that you keep adding without context, and then you jump quickly back to science (i.e.. the graph on causative factors and scenarios on climate change). I mean yes deforestation is an anthropogenous cause of soil erosion but how does this fit into your comment about redesigning society? The core of our problem is our worldviews in how we see and understand the natural world and ourselves, and our relationship to one another.  So what I am suggesting is that 1. either you omit the claim that we need massive societal redesign (bring it up later if appropriate), or 2. you explain what you mean alongside of providing all of these schematics.
- Great definition of bioremediation. I appreciate that you bring up the cost - as it is a privilege to access remediation tools/processes in many cases - yet the locations needing rendition are often very much in poverty and underserved by social/political programs.
- I love the phrase soils and social movements!
- So you say you did this research of 7 different projects - here would be a great opportunity to provide a quick table with project name, key mission, location, main outcomes, approach. Any way to briefly summarize the patterns of how these projects engage in the world, would be extremely useful. I know you have a summary statement, I’m just giving a suggestion as to how this could be more easily accessed from the point of view of your reader/student/reviewer. I think it would also help you see the patterns.
- With soil hack - when you say it has the potential to develop infrastructure for soil education and research - tell us who’s the target users of this platform? Above you say the science fields. Perhaps define what you mean by leftist organizations as some of your readers may be international (from countries that don’t use that delineation).
- Amazed by how many different projects you have been engaged in supporting!  the EAT program looks wonderful. You say this program is in 2018 - have any of them been implemented? Would be great to have you go back in here when you do your final portfolio submission later this year.
- Great that you have an example of bioremidation in action. So as of now fungi is the active experiment? 
- I love the integrative feel of your conclusion that also leaves us with a inspiration of solidarity with soils. I think you succeed at providing a significant body of work on the role of soils and the social and ecological forces/present day challenges shaping soil and our relationship to soil/our planet. Valuable insight into soil and climate change. I also appreciate the cross cultural, and cross organizational/multidisciplinary take on the topic - with an emphasis on grassroots organizing. 
- What i think could be added for more impact in future writings is the human sphere. Can you make this more anchored in a person’s experience. Examples of how you might do this - storytelling (add the point of view of an individual interacting with their day and provide an example story of how soil/degradation is impacting their life), comparative assessment (compare and contrast cross-cultural approaches to remediation), case studies (delve more into providing examples of working solutions), myth and metaphor (soil is an excellent analogy for our human experience - there are all sorts of comparisons to our physical and psychological sphere/conditions). All of the examples I just offered are additional styles of writing that can help shape the accessibility to this complex topic.
- Could you summarize something like - here are - 10 things you can do to remediate your relationship to soil or something of that nature - to give the reader an action plan?

Supporting Evidence -
- Dissemination of resource review via website - good thinking! Impressive 100+ resources! You’re very thorough in your research efforts Nicole. I’m so impressed.
- Good evidence of outcomes.
- You’re very last burnout blog! I hope so! I value that you continually track your self care. Well done! I hope that it’s helping you be much more mindful. I know that you’re exploring and creating many self care routines.
- I really am going to make an effort to read these blogs - I love your writing and feel like I can learn a lot from your deep reflections. I want to learn how to write more introspective blog posts (my articles are too time consuming to publish quickly) so am hoping that I can find some fresh inspirations for creative and meaningful writing out of your posts.
- So grateful for your tracking and documentation practices. You have developed a very streamlined system that is super beneficial to the rest of us.
- I hope one day you turn these journals and blogs into a guide book or manual on “being an activist”.