A quick housekeeping note before we get to the good stuff: Above and to the right, you’ll find a field to enter your email address. If you’re already a member of the TPC (The Permaculture Circle), please use the same email you currently use to access TPC. By doing so, you’ll be able to access all your materials in a single spot and with a single login / password (TPC materials, the 2019 PDC course, and any future courses you enroll in). If you’ve forgotten your password, no problem: Enter your email anyway, then scroll to the bottom on the next screen, click “Forgot your password?” and follow the rest of the instructions.
Now, onto the good stuff…
If you’ve made it this far, I’m assuming you’re ready to enroll in the 2019 Online PDC 2.0 🙂
I know what this has meant to students in the past, and I’m delighted for you about what this will mean for your future. Above all, I’m honored that you’ve chosen to trust me and my team to be with you on this incredible journey ahead.
Here’s a quick recap of what you’ll receive, among other things, when you enroll today:
- Online PDC 2.0 (28-week course): Extensive training ideal for complete beginners, experienced permaculturists, and everyone in between. There will be a new batch of modules released each week for 28 weeks that will help pace the course and form the basis of the weekly Q&A and online community discussion.
- Catch-up Sessions: Spaced throughout the course, we will have five 1-week intermissions set-aside exclusively for catching-up and to give you an opportunity to review the previous block of course materials. I will continue doing video Q&As during these weeks, and the TAs will be available daily, monitoring the discussion areas.
- Extended Access: After the 28 weeks are over, you will have continued, full access to all the videos, recorded Q&As, animations, and PDFs through January 31st, 2020. Watch, listen, and read as many times as you’d like.
- Permaculture Design Certificate: Successfully completing the final design product will result in you being awarded the Permaculture Design Certificate, the same globally-recognized certificate that Bill honored me with more than 30 years ago, and that I’ve presented to over 15,000 qualified students in the decades since. Again, we are honored to be the first permaculture institute anywhere in the world to issue digital certificates that are cryptographically secured by blockchain. 1-click social media sharing (LinkedIn, Facebook + dozens more) is built in, as is “anytime printing” in ultra-high resolution.
- 750+ instructional modules: Blackboard-style instructional presentations, rich animations, detailed PDFs, Knowledge Checks, Learning Objectives, Activities, Brief Overviews, and Key Takeaways: A set of these will be released weekly, as per the curriculum schedule. Study them, ask questions 24/7, then prepare for the weekly video question & answer session.
- Q&A weekly: After watching the core video modules (blackboard and supplemental animations), you’ll have a chance to ask me follow-up questions; all sessions will be recorded and made available to you in your student portal. For your benefit, we’ve included recordings from the previous course, featuring several hundred Q&A.
- Community town hall (24/7): A sleek, modern discussion area powered by industry-leader Disqus far exceeds outdated commenting tools; a clean and easy-to-use platform fosters meaningful interactions with course teaching assistants, me, and your peers (professionals, aid workers, NGO staff, etc.)
- Daily help from PDC-certified teaching assistants: A team of fantastic teaching assistants (TAs) facilitate lively discussion, offer insights, and provide timely, helpful answers to your questions. Each of our TAs have been rigorously vetted and are passionate about permaculture.
- Automatic inclusion in The Permaculture Circle (TPC): My most recent contribution to the permaculture community is a free, online community that includes a curated collection of 70+ instructional videos, animations, and other resources. By virtue of your enrollment today in the PDC, if don’t already have it, you’ll automatically be added to this.
To give you a sense of what’s covered over the 28 weeks, here is a module-by-module breakdown of the course:
- Module 1: Introduction
- Module 2: Concepts & Themes in Design
- Module 3: Methods of Design
- Module 4: Pattern Understanding
- Module 5: Climatic Factors
- Module 6: Trees & Their Energy Transactions
- Module 7: Water
- Module 8: Soils
- Module 9: Earth Working & Earth Resources
- Module 10: Humid Tropics
- Module 11: Dryland Strategies
- Module 12: Humid Cool to Cold Climates
- Module 13: Aquaculture
- Module 14: Strategies of an Alternative Global Nation
Remember that the structure of this course blends elements of a self-paced approach with the most advantageous elements of a schedule-based course (i.e., specific start and end dates). What this practically means is this: Like a self-paced course, you can enroll and then start anytime as long as you do so within the first 3 months of the enrollment period. You can then work as quickly as you’d like to complete the course materials by the end of August, and then the Final Design Exercise by the last day of the course access (January 31st, 2020). At the same time, we’ve put together a suggested schedule that you may choose to follow in order to feel that you are moving along at (roughly) the same pace as hundreds of others in the class. Some weeks you may choose to slow down, others to speed up. You can in principle complete all the course materials in 10-12 weeks; the fact that we give you 28 weeks to do so (and we’ve actually spread out the publication of the materials across 28 weeks), means that you can start the class well into the 2nd and even 3rd month AFTER enrollment opens (i.e. as late as April 30th, 2019), and still do just fine. OR you can start at the beginning and take a moderate pace throughout the class. The course is flexible enough to accommodate your unique needs. If you have any additional questions about this, please reach out to us and we’ll be happy to provide additional guidance about your specific circumstances.
Three last things to remember, and then I’ll leave you alone so that you can enroll 🙂
- Currency: Kindly note tuition pricing is in US dollars. If you’re using a non-US dollar method of payment, that’s fine: There is nothing further that you need to do, because your bank / credit card provider will automatically make the appropriate currency conversion.
- License, not ownership: Please remember that enrollment does not imply ownership of the materials, but rather is a license for your personal use. What this practically means is that you can watch, listen, and read the materials as much as you’d like for your own personal and professional benefit (from the start of the course through December 31st, 2019), but may not share the materials or login details with anyone outside your immediate household. It’s common sense, fair, and provides you with all that you need. For full details, we invite you to take a glance at the detailed terms and conditions and other requisite legalese that our lawyers made us include 🙂 I may later offer (only to students who enroll in the full PDC course) a “lifetime access” option for a small, add-on tuition fee, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Again, if I offer something like this down the road, it will be only to students who enrolled and completed the full online PDC 2.0.
- Refunds: As always, we have a generous, 30 day, 100% money-back guarantee. If you’re not delighted with the course, let us know and we’ll provide you with a rapid refund. And at the risk of stating the obvious, as a way of thanking you for your trust and time, even if you decide that this course isn’t right for you, we wholeheartedly invite you to continue enjoying the content and community inside TPC. Our goal is to delight, not hold a magnifying glass to a calendar 🙂
