For those of us who started in the traditional system, the process was fairly obvious: take your manual to your meetings. Every speech you gave was defined in the manual. Every evaluation you received was written in the same manual. What changed with Pathways ?
While most of us sat in Pathways training sessions during the program rollout, we heard concepts such as “all electronic” and “online processes“. I had hopes that not only would the speaker have an online-experience, but so would other participants such as your evaluator. Did that happen? Yes…and no.
The evaluation for any given project you will give in Pathways technically speaking, is “electronic“. Yes – you will find a link at least twice in any given path called “Evaluation Resource“. Yes – you can click on it and you will see the electronic versions your speech evaluation. Is it functional? No – not from a practical perspective. Depending on the device you use, or more importantly, the device your Evaluator will use may or may not open that link (which is ultimately a .pdf file) in a manner that not only allows for free form editing, but would allow someone to save those edits and return them to you in a practical manner.
What’s the work around?
Print the evaluation. Give it to your evaluator. Have them evaluate your speech as they typically do. Take your completed evaluation home with you and either capture it (scan or take a pic), then add it to your Pathways repository…or do what I do, kick it old school:
It’s an analog solution to a digital system. Works for me and complies with the Toastmasters Pathways process.
Following Your Path 