Output Packet Pro Review

Main Advisor and OP Reviewer: Laura Kaestele
Associate Name: Carolina-Therese Winter
Output Packet #: 5
Program: Bachelor of Science and Permaculture Design Diploma
Phase/ALC: PreCAP-ALC2
Date Submitted: December 26th, 2019
Date Reviewed: January 29th, 2020
Mark: 73
Grade: B
Time Spent on Review: 3.0 hrs + 0.5 for review forms

Dear Carolina,
congratulations on completing your OP 5 Learning Review and submitting it as planned in December. This is the final piece of documentation to wrap up your pre-capstone phase and before taking a longer baby pause from your studies. I value the project and OP summaries, evaluation of design and action learning skills as well as evaluation of pathway, project and time management you shared. Let's celebrate all your achievements, challenges – as they hold the greatest potential for growth – learning experiences, increased clarity, focus and sense of purpose in your pathway and life. I feel grateful to know you, accompany your journey and provide support as your main advisor. Wishing you a beautiful program pause and ongoing permaculture design work!

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

Required Next Steps: 
�	Add your review of a peer's OP on the first page of the Learning Review.

Recommended Next Steps: 
�	Continue to improve your English writing skills, use grammarly and arrange proof-reading.
�	Experiment with one new genre and writing style for your next OP, try it as an experiment.
�	Advance your critical evaluation skills by comparing, contrasting and expanding different theories and models to each other and your own practical experience.
�	Focus more on doing and expand your practical skills in permaculture design and growing as well as delivering strong project outcomes and benefits to the field.
�	Make assessment and evaluation both qualitative and quantitative by choosing appropriate metrics to evaluate the success and impact of your interventions and actions.
�	Design a solid dissemination strategy for your future OP writing both online and offline and make sure to do tracking and ongoing documentation for your projects and business.

Cheers, 
Laura

OP REVIEW

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

COMMENTS PER SECTION

Title and Summary
•	I appreciate the clear project summary providing the pathway reference, purpose and life context. Starting and ending the ALC with a pregnancy – what a neat pattern observation!
•	Since you don't give a content summary – instead share a table of contents – consider explaining that the report follows the design steps as a structure. What is the correlation between the design steps and the content pages?
•	I am also missing brief reflections on core outcomes or highlights form the LR as part of the summary. It kind of ends abruptly after mentioning the design process used.
•	Great articulation of the design methodology illustrated by a colorful flowchart. Nice choice to describe both the general design phase of SADIE and your specific LR application.
•	Consider adding the resource reference with image credits directly under the image that key the reference is super clear and not stretched out across an entire page.
•	An interesting, different choice to start with the project introduction and design, although I would consider that core report and not commentary as it is project instead of OP focused.

Survey
 •	Nice feature to add the design step description as a page introduction at the top, this serves as a reminder and guide for readers to easily follow along your LR design process.
 •	I like the pathway timeline overview you share and the sections for OP production, project work, life happenings and other activities. Easy to see patterns and connections.
 •	Succinct and clear summary of your pathway timing, interventions and overarching patterns in relation to your life – traveling, becoming a mother, ecological living etc.
 •	Wow, fantastic to see the growth of your local support network and the pattern of having a home and how for you that leads to more, regular relationships.
 •	I think this page needs more weaving between sections and the addition of short summary or overview statements otherwise it seems rather disconnected and „bumpy“ e.g. not jump right into OP 1 after the support network chart.
 •	Great structure for the OP descriptions including a short summary, life context – which has influenced your study work tremendously -  focus, goals and outcomes. 
 •	For the project OPs adding which LIPD goals they meet is an excellent idea and demonstrates well how you consciously created, tracked, and renegotiated your LIPD.
 •	I understand the word count is limited and I think the cumulative reflections on your surveying skills and tools are insightful and practical; to know what you are good at, what your learning edges are and to share best practices with readers.

Analysis
 •	Well done for making this page all about permaculture design, introducing the permaculture flower and evaluating your project work with that perspective. 
 •	Fantastic to see the diversity of your project activities reaching through ALL seven domains of the flower. A holistic pathway and an example proving the theory that all these areas are necessary to sustain humanity or lead a sustainable life as you are trying and doing.
 •	This analysis process also provides useful insights into which areas are needing more attention and skill-building to make your life dreams come true and become a professional permaculture designer.
 •	Excellent field assessment including „players in the field“, your learning and projects as well as long-term goals. Since this is the LR I am missing a reflection of outcomes and benefits to the field as well as comments on dissemination or professional development.

Design 
 •	Happy to witness your evolution as a designer and shift to becoming more conscious, intentional, effective and skilled as a designer. I think this is really one of the gifts of studying at GaiaU – we all learn to value and apply design to everything in life.
 •	I like the distinction into design layers e.g. principles, methods, tools, strategies and I am missing design processes or frameworks like SADIE that you are using in this listing. Why is that not included?
 •	Again, I would suggest adding a sentence to weave the bullet point list with the documentation of all these design treasures, as a way to share best practices and example.
 •	This whole design section is an amazing summary of permaculture design thinking and tools you have applied in your studies so far and can inspire and teach readers.
 •	I agree since doing the permaculture design diploma your design work and use of methods is more clear and strategic. Similar to how the family or land focus brought clarity to your life pathway and professional direction.
 •	I feel glad our main advising sessions and design conversation have helped you recognise patterns, identify why you are stuck where and come out with learnings and solutions e.g. the project and OP design pattern. Besides, I agree project design has priority.
 •	Excellent summary of the three key design methodologies or processes you used in this ALC sharing a description of the process steps and your own reflections. To take this section to the next level compare the three models to each other and conclude when to use what.

Implement
 •	The implementation of your pathway and LIPD is predominantly done through action learning and therefore sharing an assessment of your skills in relation to the Kolb Model is relevant. An additional description of stages and styles would be useful.
 •	Interesting observation – both intuitive and through the assessment sheet – that you natural, comfortable learning style is diverging, to experience and observe. I also appreciate your reflections on learning edges and skill-building in the other three areas through adding concrete examples and referencing your project and learning activities.
 •	I am wondering whether you agree with Kolb that every person has a natural strength in one learning style or rather that our education system, upbringing and survival strategies – basically the conditioning and oppressions we experience – define and limit our styles?
 •	How can you connect the action learning assessment section with the skill-building text?
 •	Some of the words in the skill-flex radar, especially at the bottom, overlap and I can not read them. Make sure any illustrations you present can be easily understood.
 •	The skill-building patterns and conclusions celebrate what you learned and your achievements so far as well as showing a path forward and the next stage of your life's work and professional development.
 •	In the cumulative reflections on implementation, I value your insights into how developing an experimentation and action attitude is a learning edge and you tend to get stuck in dreaming and thinking – generating many ideas and long to-do lists.
 •	I am curious to see how you attend and respond to these areas for improvement in your next OP 1 LIPD e.g integrating useful tracking and documentation into project design.

Evaluate
�	Interesting use of a kanban board (style) to evaluate goal progress and achievements. Let's celebrate the success of all the goals achieved and the motivation for continuing work on the ones in progress or just started!
�	I love these succinct summaries of patterns, timing, interventions and transitions related to your life, projects and OPs. Beautiful to witness and your advisor throughout the journey of your life these past three years. I feel glad to see your flowering and maturing process.
�	Well done for navigating multiple bit life transitions and continuing your GaiaU studies and project work. I feel excited about your capstone phase, project work and professional growth based on the foundation of strong clarity, direction and purpose you gained.
�	Yes! I agree, being the stewards of a piece of land will provide plenty of opportunities to learn and gain practical – earth care – skills, which in turn will add to your growing professional competence as a permaculture designer.
�	Nice to include a little permaculture field assessment (with the two streams of land or people-based work) and position yourself inside the field. I would encourage you to expand and critically analyse this permaculture field assessment further for your next LIPD.
�	Wow, these are indeed many new goals for the next phase, I can see how they directly emerge from this Learning Review and have relevance to your life. Please make sure the graphic is all in English for readers to understand, there is a bit of German mixed in.
�	Both the new goals and skills you want to develop function as a mini LIPD, outlook and jumping board into the next ALC. Excited for the learning journey to continue!
�	At the end of the page, I am missing some kind of conclusion to the entire core report, it ends quite abruptly. This again related to content flow and weaving text well together.

Cumulative Pathway Reflections
�	Yes, your pathway is a great example of how one's life and transition experience can inspire and shape project and study work. All your projects and OPs have had direct relevance and connection to these different life stages and document your journey.
�	As always I appreciate the photos and this drone shot of your home and land!
�	Well done for applying the 20/80, actively engaging in the LR with clarity, productivity and a limited time frame. Congratulations on finishing this last OP and submitting it on time.
�	I look forward to seeing you use SMART goals more in future projects and implementing actions with motivation and efficiency. 
�	I agree you have grown in your understanding and capacity of the PoDAPO criteria and general OP creation process. Fantastic to see the quality feedback for peers improve.
�	Nice to read your dissemination plans for the future. I want to encourage and challenge you to design and integrate meaningful dissemination into all projects of your capstone phase. I am missing a summary of the dissemination you have already done here e.g. blog articles on website and video clips on youtube...?
�	Excellent idea to share your participation in the GaiaU related to each OP and project, this gives a clear impression of your engagement and learning support network. I feel glad to reach you value our learning guild on slack and the personal relationships.
�	Great cumulative digiphon with all the software and tools you have used as well as some personal reflections and recommendations for digital tools. I am curious to read more about the tools and best practices you use for project and time management. 

OP Process Reflections
�	It seems you share the same kind of life context multiple times in the report. Is that intentional repetition or could you come more to the point, be concise by editing better?
�	Interestingly I disagree with your assessment of using „very little permaculture principles, patterns, and tools“ as you describe yourself you have actively worked with three core principles of David Holmgren, worked with the permaculture flower, shared many permaculture methods, design strategies and tools.
�	I really want to you notice permaculture in everything you do (unconscious to conscious), bring it in actively, embrace and embody it in all your learning, projects and OPs – to basically make it a habit to use permaculture design both for thinking and doing. 
Supportive Evidence
�	Great work to share further dissemination efforts (recordings, videos, website and blog), a complete resume (do you also have a pdf version that you can easily share with potential employers, partners, clients or collaborators?), and a collection of resources, courses and people that all informed your knowledge building and learning process.
�	Another thing to add would have been more materials on professional development, project outcomes, pathway management and un/learning or project journals. 
�	For your capstone phase, I want you to think about what, why and how you want to document your learning and work to be most relevant for implementing your life projects, getting support (collaboration) and growing as a professional permaculture designer. What is the portfolio you want to build to serves you 100% (beyond GaiaU)?

OP Reviews
�	As you noted yourself, definite improvements in your understanding of the PoDAPO criteria for your own OP production and to provide beneficial feedback to peers. 
�	It would have been interesting to see a cumulative assessment of your PoDAPO skills, map the development over three years and proivde a metric and qualitative evaluation.
�	I would actually like to see more permaculture design focused feedback from Nesrin as your permaculture designer, not just comments to exactly the same PoDAPO review forms. I will give that feedbck to Andrew and Liora and ask about it.
�	What do you think about the permaculture mentor feedback? Is it useful or not to you?