Many of us who have been working both Pathways and the traditional program in parallel, like to read ahead and better understand the road we are travelling. At some point I saw this listed on one of Mark Snow’s flowcharts:

I assumed that as I completed my 2nd path, it would magically appear in my transcript…it does not. After a couple of you asked me the same question, I reached out to TMI World Headquarters. Here’s their official response:

Once members complete Level 3 of their second path in Pathways, they will need to email educationprogram@toastmasters.org and the project will be added to their transcript. However, you can certainly access the Project Description in Base Camp at anytime. The description can be found under the Tutorials and Resources section. Alternatively, you can use the search box (in Base Camp) on the upper right hand side and type in Distinguished Toastmaster Project and hit Enter.

I have done so and will report back as I gain more context.

In addition to having a passion for Pathways, I also care deeply about our Distinguished Club Program (DCP). It’s how the success and overall health of a club is measured. It’s also how we measure the performance of our Area, Division & District leaders, as well as I’m sure others up the food chain.

The best way to explain it is to look at a club report. This is from my D33 home group: Say Watt (2295):

It took 2x CC’s to equal one DCP “credit”. In Pathways, it takes 4x Level 1‘s to accomplish the same. As you can see, the higher you move up the levels, the less completions required to get credit.

I personally believe the two are in parity. Six (6) was the max credit a club could earn in the legacy program, and 6 remains the limit in Pathways. While we are in the two year period of overlap, 6 is still a combined limit as well.

Move your journeys along, recruit new members, and do the minimum fundamentals expected of club leadership, and you too can be part of a 10/10 club experience.

Possibly. If you happened to be a dual member (a member of more than one club) back when your specific district launched Pathways, then yes – you get a 2nd path for no cost.

Our friend Nancy Bateman, the Pathways guru extraordinaire over in D50, crafted an easy to use form letter that can be emailed to TMI:

If you are requesting your second free learning path in online materials, please copy and paste the script below and send in an email to World Headquarters. The email address and text for the subject line follow. Club officers should not complete this task for you.

SEND REQUEST TO: SupplyOrders@Toastmasters.org

SUBJECT LINE: REQUEST 2nd FREE LEARNING PATH, PATHWAYS

Dear Toastmasters International Supply Order Team,

I held a dual membership as a Toastmaster in District 50 when Pathways launched in our District on February 13, 2018. I have taken my assessment and selected my first learning path. This email is my official request to provide my second free learning path in Pathways.

First and Last Name: Name

Member ID: Number

Email address: Email

Club Name: Club

Club Number: Number

2nd Free Path Requested: Path Name

Thank you in advance for your assistance,

Name

Obviously you’ll want to replace “District 50” with your specific district number and you’ll want to change the launch date to that of your respective district. (For those in D33, the launch date was September 19, 2017.) For other districts, check with your leadership team or a local Pathways guide.

If you are the President, VPE or Secretary, there are a number of detailed reports inside Base Camp that you have access to as a Base Camp Manager. Those reports are designed to give you specifics on who is progressing through which Paths.

If you are not a BCM or just want to know who has at least, begin their Pathways journey, the simplest way is via Club Central, which all officers have access to. Log in to Club Central and look for your Club Roster:

Inside your Club Roster, the detailed member list now shows a Pathways status under the member’s name and #:

This quick view shows you at least who has enrolled in Pathways and who has not. It’s an easy way to determine what type of effort might be needed to encourage your members to take that first step and embrace the future of Toastmasters. Now that all Districts have had Pathways formally rolled out, the future is now.

Of all of the questions you could ask 10 people, this is the one that you might get 15 different answers to. In the legacy program, you started with your initial CC and CL manuals. Once completed, you carried designations from both the Communication and Leadership tracks.

Pathways changes that. Paths are singular in nature and your designation takes on the initials of your path (LD = Leadership Development & 5 = Level 5), such as LD5. Seems simple and until you get to DTM (through either program), you carry the designation of the 1) highest level achieved of the 2) latest path accomplished. I started Leadership Development and worked it in parallel with both the traditional program as well as a second path, Team Collaboration. Having completed both paths, TMI officially classifies me as a TC5:

What about my other designations? This is where there is a diverse opinion. There is nothing that prevents you from carrying all legitimate designations, although it can seem to be quite an alphabet soup:

Just know that the TMI database carries your highest, most recent accomplishment, but club systems (like FTH) aren’t integrated and are free form as part of your profile. Until I’m a DTM, you’ll see me carry as many as will fit…and with this being my 8th Post, I’ll sign off as DaWane Wanek, ACG, ALB, LD5, TC5, VC4.

This is a timely question. TMI defines Base Camp as:

Base Camp is your online gateway to Pathways, where you will find everything you need on your journey. Here you can work on projects, track your progress, connect with members of your club and view badges and certificates you’ll earn along the way. Base Camp also features resources to help guide you, including videos, quizzes, interactive activities and more.

I define Base Camp as the underlying platform in which Pathways sits. In addition to holding the Pathways “app”, it also contains the approval workflow necessary for users to progress through the Pathways experience.

What makes the question timely? It’s club election season. In today’s implementation of Pathways, only three clubs officers have access as BCM’s. Base Camp was designed with the VPE in mind, however access was expanded to include the club President as well as the club Secretary.

Want to become a BCM and play a critical role in your club’s Pathways success? Run for President, VP Education or Secretary. Contact your club’s current officers, as elections are already taking place in most clubs.

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.

Level 2 is where the curriculum begins to diversify.  As you can see from Mark Snow’s handy visual workflow for Level 2:

The structure of the project requirements is consistent across Paths, but project variance begins with Level 2 (and even more so beyond). For example, in comparing my two completed paths, Leadership Development had me focused on time management, while Team Collaboration taught me the difference in “hearing” and “listening”. Other components such as introducing the concept of Toastmasters Mentoring and defining/understanding my personal leadership style was common across both.

 

You completed Level 1 (congrats). You notified your VPE (yes there are auto-notification alerts to your club’s President, VPE & Secretary, however we are human and are known to miss things). Once they have approved your Level 1 completion and if you log back in to your curriculum, you’ll see the “Print Certificate” button, receiving a .pdf similar to this:

As a best practice, I save these .pdf’s to my local hard drive, or screen capture it on my iPad for future reference.

When I completed my first L1, I assumed that when I got my handy, dandy completion certificate, my club would also receive their DCP credit for my accomplishment. I must have been napping during Pathways training, but there is one final step for credit to post into the DCP tracking system. A club officer still needs to log into Club Central and manually enter the Educational Award, as the two systems are not integrated at this time.

Originally, I questioned the extra step, however it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I have built into my personal process, emailing the certificate to the VPE of the club I want to give credit to. For those of us who belong to multiple clubs, it allows you to optimize assignment to a club who actually can benefit from your accomplishment. For example, if one of my clubs have already maxed out with 4x Level 1’s, an additional L1 from me won’t help the cause. I’ll assign it to another club who will benefit from this specific achievement. If you are unsure about the status of your clubs, check out the dashboards under Leadership Central – Distinguished Performance Reports:

…or talk to your VPE.

Yes. You will ultimately need to serve most of the meeting roles by the time you complete other levels as well. Don’t fret, either serving willingly or being volun-told to tackle various meeting roles is part of how we learn and grow in Toastmasters. How can you make sure you get credit in Pathways?

Log into you profile at https://www.toastmasters.org/

Once in your profile, head over to your Pathways Transcript:

While in your Transcript screen, click the “wheel” to the right of your picture and select “My Account” from the drop down menu.

This opens up the Preferences tab, that allows you to enter your role service dates.

It’s a “best practice” to enter the dates as you perform the roles, even if your current level doesn’t require it. A number of members have shared their frustration on either not knowing or forgetting to document when they have performed a role and found out when they were unable to move on past their current level because this information was missing from their profile.