Free online Oregon State University class to teach permaculture in May

Free online OSU class to teach permaculture in May

Andrew Millison, a longtime proponent, practitioner, designer and builder of permaculture systems, will teach a free, online course, Intro to Permaculture Design, from May 2-30. The massive open online course, or MOOC, is intended for anyone, anywhere. Registration continues through May 1 at canvas.net/browse/oregonstate/courses/permaculture-design. About 10,000 people are expected to take the class.
Students will spend two to four hours a week creating their own permaculture design by importing a Google map of their site and using a simple drag-and-draft tool. Through videos, graphics, interactive technology and readings, they’ll get an overview of permaculture, learn to do a site analysis, study methods and principles and get into climate-specific strategies.

DESCRIPTION

In this free, online course, you’ll learn about the process, ethics, and principles of permaculture while diving into climate-specific design elements through interactive technology, videos, graphics, and readings. Permaculture design is a method of landscape planning that can be applied to anything, from a home garden or farm to a city block or entire village. Permaculture uses design principles from nature itself and takes into account such things as how indigenous people used the land. This course is designed to benefit everyone regardless of learning style, time commitments, or available technology. Expect to spend between two to four hours each week on coursework.

OBJECTIVES

Define what the permaculture design system is, as well as its ethics and principles.
Organize the order of the permaculture design process.
Diagram elements of watershed, sector, and zone maps.
Identify design elements appropriate for each climate.

COURSE INSTRUCTORS

Andrew Millison
ANDREW MILLISON
Instructor
Andrew Millison brings 20 years of experience designing and building permaculture projects to his teaching and wants to share that rich, real-world experience. He's been studying, teaching, and practicing permaculture since 1996. He began teaching permaculture at the college level in 2001 and joined the Horticulture Department at Oregon State University in 2009. Andrew currently teaches Permaculture Design and the Advanced Permaculture Design Practicum at OSU on campus and online.

A Link for those interested.

https://www.canvas.net/browse/oregonstate/courses/permaculture-design

Thanks for posting! This looks great and I signed up today.

For those of you still on the fence here is a link to a short podcast from Permaculture Voices that describes the course.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/permaculture-voices-profitable/id676930917?mt=2&i=366165173

Hello and welcome to Oregon State University's free course "Intro to Permaculture"!

We have spent a great deal of time and resources to make this the best experience that we can for you so that you can use this information to benefit your own life and the lives of your families, communities and the environment.

We have nearly 13,000 people taking this course, so it will be impossible for us to answer every question and address every concern. Through the discussion boards, we hope you all can interact together in a helpful way, and answer each others questions when you are able. We will be screening the discussions the best we can to pick up on major themes and questions to address in a weekly announcement throughout the 4 weeks of the class.

In this short introductory course, we are just skimming the surface of many topics, and offer links for you to explore more deeply. We estimate the time to complete the course at 3-4 hours per week, or 12-16 hours total. The average Permaculture Design course runs 72-100 hours to give you some perspective of how much of the total Permaculture Design course curriculum we are covering.

We are truly thankful for this opportunity to provide this course to you and introduce you to this amazing tool for improving life. We sincerely hope that you will turn the information from this course into actions that benefit all life on Earth.

Enjoy the course!

Andrew Millison and the Intro to Permaculture team.

My bold

I'm looking forward to starting the course this morning......maybe we can compare notes back here in this thread?

...and it looks like you can still sign up, for those who just found out about it

https://www.canvas.net/browse/oregonstate/courses/permaculture-design

bump! the course starts today! I think you can probably sign up after today also though...seems like lots of free online courses let you do that.

I just signed up, haven't received the confirmation email it requires to access the course.

Let's see how long this takes.

EDIT: At least an hour so far.

I'm taking the course! Who else is registered?

Kyrt Ryder wrote:I just signed up, haven't received the confirmation email it requires to access the course.

Let's see how long this takes.

EDIT: At least an hour so far.

Hi Kurt - if it doesn't let you register, here are the videos (available via Youtube) - [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/user/OSUEcampus/videos[/youtube]

Tara Swenson wrote:

Kyrt Ryder wrote:I just signed up, haven't received the confirmation email it requires to access the course.

Let's see how long this takes.

EDIT: At least an hour so far.

Hi Kurt - if it doesn't let you register, here are the videos (available via Youtube) - https://www.youtube.com/user/OSUEcampus/videos

I just called and checked with the company hosting the videos. It seems registration frequently takes several hours. I imagine the actual course will be better organized than a pile of youtube videos, but many thanks for the fallback option.

Just signed up and the confirmation email came instantly. Probably just a function of how many are enrolling at the same time.

Ferne Reid wrote:Just signed up and the confirmation email came instantly. Probably just a function of how many are enrolling at the same time.

How frustrating. I still haven't received my confirmation email with login materials, and nobody in customer service will even talk to me.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:

Ferne Reid wrote:Just signed up and the confirmation email came instantly. Probably just a function of how many are enrolling at the same time.

How frustrating. I still haven't received my confirmation email with login materials, and nobody in customer service will even talk to me.

Maybe it went to your spam folder? I've had that happen sometimes. I registered awhile back and don't remember how quickly I got the confirmation.

Judith Browning wrote:

Kyrt Ryder wrote:

Ferne Reid wrote:Just signed up and the confirmation email came instantly. Probably just a function of how many are enrolling at the same time.

How frustrating. I still haven't received my confirmation email with login materials, and nobody in customer service will even talk to me.

Maybe it went to your spam folder? I've had that happen sometimes. I registered awhile back and don't remember how quickly I got the confirmation.

Nope, my spam folder is totally empty.

EDIT: Ok, so I finally got through to the staff directly responsible for hosting this course [by asking the initial person for a direct number rather to be transferred] and this time I'm being told it can take up to 24 hours [rather than the '2-3' I was told earlier.]

Sooooo this has been rather disappointing, given the registration process said nothing about such delays. But we'll see if I actually get in or not by tomorrow morning.

So I was able to acquire an email to set a password by going to the 'login' link in the upper right section of the dashboard and telling it I forgot my password and getting a 'change password' email sent to me.

Successfully logged into this course, no thanks to customer service.

Hopefully this helps anyone else in the same predicament.

I signed up absolutely no problem.

From what I've seen of the course so far, I'm highly impressed. I'd recommend it to anyone!

Burra Maluca wrote:I signed up absolutely no problem.

From what I've seen of the course so far, I'm highly impressed. I'd recommend it to anyone!

me too! Other than what I learn here at permies and a few other on line sources, this is the first I've taken a permaculture 'class' and it seems very well presented and informative. I think it's going to help me to work on design for our new place.
Has anyone else begun the course?

I am taking the course; am two days into it. Andrew Millison's presentation is excellent. I have observed two PDCs, and his info and approach is the best I have seen. Somewhere it said 13,000 people have signed up for this course. I don't know if they mean over all time, or just for this session. But reading through the introductions in the forum, it is so heartening to be in touch with people all over the world who truly care about creating regenerative lifestyles. The course outline says to expect to spend about four hours a week on this program. There is no way I can follow and read all the links in four hours. The first night I started at 6:30 pm and was still up at 9:30 am following rabbit trails. I am not at all impressed with the delivery system (Canvas). I find it clunky and glitchy, which further adds to the supposed four hours a week.

Just registered and am looking forward to checking it out. I've watched a few PDC video courses, both complete and incomplete, most notably the one from Dr. Will Hooker our of North Carolina State University. The way I see it, considering everyone has different teaching styles, personal interests and areas of expertise, the more the merrier Being on a low-capacity solar setup and bottom-of-the-line DSL out here in the boonies, not sure how well the "canvas" system will work for me - might have to resort to the youtube videos if it's too difficult with my setup.

Another permie odyssey begins - always a small bit of excitement when starting one

I don't have a lot to compare it to...we have slow dsl also, Tristan and everything seems to be working fine. I like the things he has chosen to link to and plan to go through all of them eventually.
Estar, I'm pretty sure they did mean 13,000 for this course that is happening now. I'm glad folks can still register for it...I think it will be easy to catch up if anyone registers in the next couple days. I still haven't got my location to 'pin' to the map but they say they are working on that one for several of us.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:So I was able to acquire an email to set a password by going to the 'login' link in the upper right section of the dashboard and telling it I forgot my password and getting a 'change password' email sent to me.


Hopefully this helps anyone else in the same predicament.

I got an Enrollment Success page on the Canvas Dashboard that said I was successfully enrolled. Checked my email several times but did not get confirmation email.

Then I LOGGED OUT of the Enrollment Success page on the Dashboard as Kyrt suggested and was presented with a login page. It had a "Forgot Password" field. I got an email but when I "Reset" the password the page did not complete. That is, the link did not change. I went to the Enrollment Success page again, got the email and this time the link worked.

After 40 minutes still no confirmation email. Must be some overload issues. I am on slow DSL and iPad OS9.

Anyway I am successfully enrolled and have a password. I am at the Welcome page thanks to Kyrt's workaround. A +1 for Kyrt!

Should be a busy month!

Paul

What a great course! Thanks for sharing!!!

Paul Miller wrote:

Kyrt Ryder wrote:So I was able to acquire an email to set a password by going to the 'login' link in the upper right section of the dashboard and telling it I forgot my password and getting a 'change password' email sent to me.


Hopefully this helps anyone else in the same predicament.

I got an Enrollment Success page on the Canvas Dashboard that said I was successfully enrolled. Checked my email several times but did not get confirmation email.

Then I LOGGED OUT of the Enrollment Success page on the Dashboard as Kyrt suggested and was presented with a login page. It had a "Forgot Password" field. I got an email but when I "Reset" the password the page did not complete. That is, the link did not change. I went to the Enrollment Success page again, got the email and this time the link worked.

After 40 minutes still no confirmation email. Must be some overload issues. I am on slow DSL and iPad OS9.

Anyway I am successfully enrolled and have a password. I am at the Welcome page thanks to Kyrt's workaround. A +1 for Kyrt!

Should be a busy month!

Paul

I'm glad I was able to help.

I still haven't received a confirmation email with login information lol, did you ever get one?

Kyrt Ryder wrote:

Paul Miller wrote:

Kyrt Ryder wrote:So I was able to acquire an email to set a password by going to the 'login' link in the upper right section of the dashboard and telling it I forgot my password and getting a 'change password' email sent to me.


Hopefully this helps anyone else in the same predicament.

I got an Enrollment Success page on the Canvas Dashboard that said I was successfully enrolled. Checked my email several times but did not get confirmation email.

Then I LOGGED OUT of the Enrollment Success page on the Dashboard as Kyrt suggested and was presented with a login page. It had a "Forgot Password" field. I got an email but when I "Reset" the password the page did not complete. That is, the link did not change. I went to the Enrollment Success page again, got the email and this time the link worked.

After 40 minutes still no confirmation email. Must be some overload issues. I am on slow DSL and iPad OS9.

Anyway I am successfully enrolled and have a password. I am at the Welcome page thanks to Kyrt's workaround. A +1 for Kyrt!

Should be a busy month!

Paul

I'm glad I was able to help.

I still haven't received a confirmation email with login information lol, did you ever get one?

Maybe you should try again, I got my confirmation email right away.

Not a big deal. I have access to the course now, that's good enough for me.

Kurt, thanks for the tip. I was able to use it to get logged into the course. Had the same problem you had.

Bonnie

...jumping right into design at the end of the first weeks presentations. That is what I'm most interested in, what looks like step by step planning...got my site mapped out.

Here's a quote from this morning's email about this class...apparently you can still sign up

Greetings Intro to Permaculture class,

Enrollment will soon be closing and we are now at 15,656 students! Over 4,000 people have pinned themselves on the map, and there are currently pins in 98 different nations and territories. It is truly inspiring that you are all taking time out of your lives to learn about and discuss Permaculture.

Judith Browning wrote:Location: Arkansas Ozarks zone 7 alluvial,black,deep loam/clay with few rocks, wonderful creek bottom!

You make me jealous!

It's truly exciting to see so many participating. I wonder how many are from here, permies.com, but aren't chiming in on this thread. Bet lots

Failed to register on time... ): can anyone help with access? Im guessing being free thats totally cool and positive. Thanks!

I'm taking the class and they sent an update two days ago. In the email they announced that they will be running the class again October 31st of this year. So mark your calendars!

Just finished up with the course. Really enjoyed it. Got an email a few minutes ago about taking the course again as well as links to a full online PDC (not free:-))
I had to insert the links because they wouldn't copy and paste with email. I might try it again in October just to see what they added.


Hello class,

The end of this class is quickly approaching, and it will close at midnight May 31, Pacific Standard Time. That still gives you a few days left to learn, share and enjoy.

We will be running this same class again beginning October 31st, and enrollment is now open! Please click this link http://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/
, and you are welcome to register and take the class again. If you enjoyed the class, please share it with your friends, family, and community. We will be making revisions between now and then, based on your feedback. There will be technological upgrades, as well as revisions of the content. We learned a lot from this first run and plan to make the next version even better and more functional for everyone.

We also run an online Permaculture Design Course https://pace.oregonstate.edu/catalog/permaculture-design-certificate-online through Oregon State University that is non-credit and open to everyone. This is a ten-week course where you work closely with one of our instructors to learn the entire PDC curriculum and create a detailed design plan for your site as the final product. We have the course scheduled three times over this next year, starting September 26, January 9, and April 3. Register.

There are many avenues for you to continue your Permaculture education, and we highlight many organizations on the Week 4 page World Permaculture Organizations. Taking a Permaculture Design Course or other trainings in your local region is invaluable, and there are many good programs. When you take a local course, you meet new friends, get hands-on experience in your own climate zone, learn your local soils and plants, and make connections to local projects and organizations. 

Thanks so much for taking part in this, and soak up the last days before the course closes. After that, go outside and garden!

All the best,

Andrew Millison

I lost a week or so and am behind...might finish up by the 31st Either way I think I'll take it over in October also....lots of information and I'm bogged down trying to understand the path of the sun here for placement of a greenhouse. I've got my map with zones done and am going to go on to week four and try to go back to the sun later.

BeeDee, thanks so much for your original post about this class!

You are very welcome Judith:-)
A student (Ahmed Alalawi) posted the attached PDF that gives links to all the videos in the course. I don't know how long the links are good for, but it is a nice collection.

Hi, did anyone else get closed out of the course today? I guess I thought it was ending tonight at midnight. I can't submit my last two assignments... Hoping to regain access, unless I misunderstood the closing date!

Jo

Jo Crem wrote:Hi, did anyone else get closed out of the course today? I guess I thought it was ending tonight at midnight. I can't submit my last two assignments... Hoping to regain access, unless I misunderstood the closing date!

Jo

I thought we still had today...I just checked a couple pages at random and it looks like I can access the course...videos were still up and all. I haven't tried to submit anything though.

there's no input area for a reply to the required sections, as far as I can see.

Jo Crem wrote:there's no input area for a reply to the required sections, as far as I can see.

Looks like you're right - no reply button on the final design discussion page now. Maybe you can post here and email them about everything - the "Future Courses" email definitely stated that the course closes at midnight, which is misleading and I take it meant 12am last night

I, for one, would love to see permies members' final designs posted here

Good idea Tristan, I'll start. I attached the homework assignments from week 2-4. I have a field to work with and some existing infrastructure and trees that I'm not willing to change. I'd like to contain more water on my field but it's at the top of the local watershed so the only run-off is that which lands on it already. And its quite sandy so very little runs off. My plan is to start filling in the field with berry and nut trees/shrubs starting at the NE corner (upper right). I may add a pond if I think I can get it to stay full. There is a healthy shallow aquifer under me and wetlands down the middle of the property (zone 5).

Some notes:
The angles on the zone map are to indicate the directions that the influence comes from.
The dark blue triangle is wind direction.
The light blue rectangle next to the garden is a future greenhouse.
The rectangle to the left of the garden is a future sugar shack and canning kitchen.
The squiggly lines with arrows indicate water direction or slope.
The blue donut is the pond.
The tool they gave us for the plan is a bit crude, all ponds are circles with holes in the middle. You could adjust the size but not the shape.