Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of the GOBRADIME design process.
Now it’s time to assess and evaluate your work and the process, and create your final evaluation statement. Once you’ve written that, you’ll be ready to get all of your deliverables together, fit them into the Design Project Template, and send it to your mentor with plenty of time to spare.
Make sure your mentor fills out their evaluation form well before your deadline–you can’t graduate without it!
Let’s recap all the deliverables.
Once again, here’s the master list:
- Project title/site selection
- Components List & Map
- Goals/Mission/Vision
- Stakeholder interviews
- Observation and site assessment notes
- Personal boundaries assessment
- Base map
- Zone maps
- Sectors overview map
- Edge and microclimates map
- Resources map and/or diagrams
- Species list(s)
In addition, depending on your project, you will likely need more maps showing layers of information, as below:
- Water
- Paths, flows, and patterns
- Trees, gardens, and related components
- Built environmentSocial, invisible, and economic structures
- Technology, transportation, and energy
- Animals, waste, and nutrient cycling
- Implementation task list and timeline
- Phase I Implementation map
- Phase II Implementation map
- Phase III Implementation map
- Maintenance plan.
- And now it’s time to create your personal bio and evaluation statement.
Here’s Marit with a story about slugs, evaluation, and learning from our mistakes
Using GOBRADIME as a whole-system evaluation tool
Our design process serves as a valuable pattern to review and evaluate the entire process.
Homework: you’re SO close now, but don’t rush it.
Did you do your mid-course evaluation?
While we’re on the topic of evaluation, if you haven’t done one yet, you must complete the mid-course evaluation at least once before you graduate. Your feedback is very important to us and it only takes a few minutes. Thanks!
Circle back
Feedback in this step comes from yourself, your mentor, and everywhere else! Evaluation is all about feedback, so get it in as many forms as possible. Don’t be in a hurry to finish–emphasize thoroughness over speed here. It’s tempting to skip through and skim over feedback at this stage, because we’re so close to being finished. But don’t do that. Listen, observe, record, and revel in as much information as you can gather. Circle back to your stakeholders and show them everything you have so far. You’ll be glad later.
Write your evaluation statement and designer bio
Use the GOBRADIME diagram above to evaluate your process and experience with this course. Write a one-or-two-page reflection to include in your final document.
Create a short, “About the Designer” bio for the beginning of your document. Focus on the skills that you feel have shown through the most strongly in yourself, as you have come through the process. Brag a little!