Category Archives: Toastmasters

Toastmasters Pathways – an overview of the levels and projects

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If you are in Toastmasters, you’ve probably heard that the education program is changing to Pathways. The new program has ten different paths each of which has three levels that you proceed through on your path. I started with the Presentation Mastery path as I expect that to be the most common choice in my club. You can read about my experiences in the Presentation Mastery path. It turned out to be less important than I expected in which path I choose for learning about the program. But more on that in a moment.

First lets start with some key references.

  1. District 57 (the home of Toastmasters) has a great Pathways site with lots of reference material.
  2. District 57 also has a 66 page PDF which lists:
    1. A paragraph description of the 10 paths
    2. A one page description of the projects and electives in each of the 10 paths
    3. A list of the requirements for each project
  3. A list of links to the evaluation sheets for all projects. In order for this link to work, you must already be logged into Pathways. (Don’t bother trying to login after clicking the link). This is useful if you are evaluating a member and they haven’t handed you the sheet.

Back to the paths. While the emphasis of each path varies, you have a lot of choices in common; especially in the electives. Also, the paths are mostly an equivalent amount of work. (Something that was not true of the old advanced communication manuals.)

I really liked the information in the 66 page PDF mentioned above. But I wanted to see in a view that let me compare paths. As a club officer, this is really helpful. So I made my own. I got permission from George Marshall to share my view and here it is.

This 12 page deck compares the paths level by level and gives you an idea of what to expect in each. If you are viewing this post from a corporate firewall, you may see a blank page here as this file is hosted at SlideShare. So try again from your personal computer.

Toastmasters Pathways – Evaluation and Feedback

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See my main Presentation Mastery Pathways page for some context. You become eligible to start this project after completing your icebreaker.

About the project

After some background, you watch three video evaluations of the same speech. With a timer counter in the corner of the screen. They show why the evaluations are better as they go. Which helps give an evaluation to others.

I like that Toastmasters is encouraging members to become a speech evaluator once they have given three speeches. (the icebreaker and the two in this project.) I notice some members are afraid to give a speech evaluation at that point so this will be a nice nudge of encouragement.

I also like that this project gives you the choice of using feedback to improve the same speech or to apply it to a new speech. This project had a three question quiz at the end to review what you learned and reinforce the key messages. Like saying “I” instead of “you.”

One thing I found confusing was that the links to download evaluation guides and such were a screen after “complete your assignment.” With completing, I thought there would be nothing else needed to start. Like the Icebreaker, I like that they provide the PDF version of the whole project. It’s good for a reference. It’s also good for seeing what people who opted for paper instead of base camp get. (aka seeing the value of base camp!)

PDFs

Up until now, I had been using a scanner to create PDFs of my evaluation sheets. This time, I took a picture with my phone and converted.

Logging your roles

Also, this project is the latest you have done a meeting role. In addition to completing the project, remember to go to your base camp profile to indicate that you did the role. This needs to be done to log the date of the first time you do each of the following roles:

  • Ah-Counter
  • General Evaluator
  • Grammarian
  • Speech Evaluator
  • Timer
  • Toastmaster
  • Topicsmaster

To mark yourself off:

  • From the Base Camp home page, click “Settings”
  • Click “My Account”
  • Select the date you did the role
  • Click “Save”

Toastmasters Pathways – The Icebreaker

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See my main Presentation Mastery Pathways page for some context. To start a project, click “Activate” and then click “Launch”. At this point, your status changes to “In Progress.” It took a few minutes to load. Then I got a tutorial on the navigation. After that comes the main content.

The background information is similar to what was in the paper Toastmasters CC (Competent Communicator) manual. Many things are the same like the speech length and goals.

Checklist

The first thing that is different is a project checklist PDF. It has things like scheduling your speech, rehearsing, giving your speech and submitting to get credit. Each checklist item has a box to check off and two lines where you can write comments. This whole checklist is optional.

Skills assessment

Next comes an interactive skills assessment where you rate yourself in certain areas. Not 100% intuitive is that you have to click the down arrow next to the word “directions” to actual take the assessment. The assessment is short and easy. You answers six questions by rating yourself on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high). [I like the new 5 point scale. We only had 3 numbers to choose from in the old printed manual world[

Video

There’s a video where a few people talk about their icebreaker and provide tips. It lists a manageable number of points; each described by a different person.

Outline and tips

You can view/download an outline to help you prepare for your Icebreaker. You can even download it as a PDF. After that, you get some tips on timing and how to prepare. You also get information about what to expect at the meeting such as the speech evaluator along with what to review after giving the speech.

Resources

At the end of the project, you can download a few things in PDF form. Of particular note is the PDF sheet to print and hand to your evaluator. You can also download the whole project in PDF form.

After the speech

Next comes where you assess your skills again. I printed the form for evaluation. My speech evaluator evaluated me just like normal.  When signing back to Pathways, I re-took the initial assessment and the system compared my scores. It then told me that I completed the icebreaker. (So there’s some honor system that goes on here; that you’ll wait until after giving the speech to do the post-self assessment.

I closed the tab for my Icebreaker. This refreshed the curriculum page which unlocked the other two projects in the level – evaluation and researching.

Voluntarily upload eval

You don’t have to, but I went back to basecamp and choose e-portfolio. I then uploaded my a scanned copy of my evaluator’s form. That way I don’t have to worry about finding it when I complete level 1. The E-Portfolio has folders for each of the five levels which is nice.

Voluntarily evaluate the project for Toastmasters

You have the option of taking a survey about the project for Toastmasters to gather feedback.