Tag Archives: toastmasters

Approving a Pathways level request

Posted on by
3

I submitted my Pathways Level 1 award in early January. Due to a combination of club officer vacations and the officers not knowing what to do (since Pathways is new), it took over a month to get it approved. I completed level 2 in that time.

Today, I screenshared with the club President and we approved my Level 1 award. Now that we know what to do,we know it should take under ten minutes. Here’s the process to quickly and easily approve a level for members of your Toastmasters club!

Step 1 – the club officer gathers info that the member  has completed the projects in the path.

There are a few options for doing this

  1. The member provides sufficient evidence that he/she has completed the speeches in the path. I went this route and emailed all my evaluations to the President and VPE. (I had chose this option because I’m a member of two clubs so the officers of the Pathways club have no other ways of validating)
  2. Past meeting agendas
  3. Speak easy or other online tracking system.

I recommend having the member at least provide you with the dates for validation if not the evaluations.

Step 2 – sign in to base camp manager

The club President, VPE or Secretary has to do this step.

  1. Sign into toastmasters.org
  2. Click “pathways”
  3. Click “go to basecamp”
  4. In the middle tile, you’ll have two options – you could choose “log in as a member” – but don’t. That takes you to Base Camp rather than Base Camp Manager. Instead, click the button under it to go to Base Camp Manager.
  5. Click “Pending Requests”
  6. Clcik the members name to view the transcript to verify. This could be cross referencing PDF evals or looking at agendas
  7. Then click the green checkbox to approve or the red x to reject. Either way, you can leave an optional comment to submit.

This process (starting from step 5), is described in the official docs with screenshots.

The member gets an email. I got mine a few minutes after the club officer hit approve.

Step 3 – getting DCP credit

Then go back into toastmasters.org and file an educational award. This increases the member’s title and gets credit towards the club’s DCP. It’s easy though – no need to type in titles:

  1. Club central
  2. Submit education awards
  3. Select member from pull down
  4. Education – level 1 (or whatever level)
  5. Submit

what to do with toastmasters members in the middle of their CC when pathways launches

Posted on by
Reply

The Toastmasters official party line is that members should complete the CC that they are in the middle of. However, my club has a lot of members that go at a “leisurely” pace. It’s not realistic to tell someone:

  1. No – “You’ve only given a few speeches so you should just start Pathways and lose them”
  2. No – “You should invest even more time in the old program to complete your CC”

I’ve created a mapping of CC speeches to Pathways speeches. It actually maps decently. (Note: I don’t have access to Pathways Level 3 yet, so that mapping is speculation)

Here I list what I’d recommend you do with members who are early in their CC and slowly going in order. The full mapping table is at the end of this Pathways presentation. This is useful for people who complete their CC speeches out of order. Or to see specifically which projects to map.

</table.

# speeches completed Advice
0 Check if they have a CL to file in the next month or so. If not, start Pathways now!
1 Have the member enroll in Pathways now and mark the Icebreaker as complete. An evaluator may need to enter the evaluation on the new form, but the speech doesn’t change.
2-3 Have the member enroll in Pathways now. Mark the Icebreaker as complete. Read the Evaluation and Feedback project. One or two of the speeches required are already done so the member has a big head start on this project. An evaluator may need to enter the evaluation on the new form, but the speech doesn’t change.
4 See advice for 2-3 speeches completed. Keep the speech 4 evaluation in case it helps for level 3. But even if it doesn’t , “losing” credit for one speech is worth enrolling in Pathways straight away.
5 See advice for 4 speeches completed. Be sure to save the speech 5 evaluation for level 2 as it maps perfectly!
6-8 While some of these projects do map to Pathways, the member is over half done with the CC. So it makes sense to talk to the member about timing, benefits of getting a CC, intent to continue in Toastmasters, etc.
9-10 Almost done with the CC! Complete it before enrolling in Pathways!

pathways – submitting level 1

Posted on by
Reply

See my main Presentation Mastery Pathways page for some context. You become eligible to start this project after completing the other level 1 projects:

Once you’ve completed all three, the final project of the level activates. “Level 1 Completion”. Clicking “launch” opens a PDF. There isn’t much to it. You click “launch” and that notifies your VPE that you completed the level. There’s nowhere in the system to submit your evaluation sheets to the VPE so I emailed them.

The status goes to “pending completion” until your VPE.

I don’t like this submission system. You can’t even look at the level 2 projects until your VPE approves level 1. But by definition, you just finished level 1 and are ready to start what is next. So the day you are most excited about moving forward you have no access to the project.

Note: I”m the first person from this club to complete level 1 so my VPE doesn’t yet know how to submit. Here’s what we learned when he actually submitted. (Not to worry; I did all the level 2 projects while waiting!)

Once the request goes through, the member gets an email. Here’s what mine looks like.

Dear Jeanne Boyarsky,

Good news! Your completion request for Level 1 Completion—Presentation Mastery was approved on 2/13/2018 6:10:00 PM. This means you have completed all of your educational requirements for this level and are ready to start the next level in your path. Visit your Education Transcript on Base Camp to view your completion approval.

In recognition of this exciting accomplishment, you have been awarded a certificate of achievement. To see or print your certificate, view the Training Details section within Level 1 Completion—Presentation Mastery. Watch the Accessing Certificates tutorial to see how to view and print your certificate.

To continue your Pathways journey, go to your Education Transcript and select the next level in your path to begin a new project. Congratulations on completing your level!

Sincerely,

Toastmasters International
www.toastmasters.org

The member also gets a level 1 badge accessible on “My badges”

Additionally, the member can go back to level 1 and look at the final project to view the certificate. It looks like this: certificate-level1