 You have just joined Toastmasters, perhaps attended a few meetings. The question on your mind is, what's next? In this video, I'm going to do a deep dive into the online component of your Toastmasters journey, focusing on the Pathways Education Program. If you are new to Toastmasters or unfamiliar with Pathways, then this video is for you. Let's get started. Once you join a club by paying your membership fee, you will receive an email from Toastmasters International welcoming you to the organization. Time to head to the website Toastmasters.org. The first thing you need to do is to create your Toastmasters profile. You do that by clicking on this login option over here. If this is your first time to this website, select this option first time logging in and click. This will take you to the page where you can set your profile password. Type in the email address that you provided when you filled in the application form and click on the submit button. You will receive an email to set your new password. Once you complete the task, go back to the login page and enter the email and password and click log in. You are now a member of Toastmasters International and you can start your Toastmasters journey. The first time you log in, you will get helpful guide explaining to you about your profile page. Click on the next and check all the options that are available to you. If you want to skip straight to your homepage, click the skip option. The first thing that you might like to do is to make sure that your profile is correct starting with your profile picture. In my case, the profile picture is already set. But if I wanted to change it, click this icon, select the option, choose file, navigate to the folder that has your photo, select it and click open. Then click on set as profile photo and your profile photo is set. You can also check your other profile information and privacy settings. To do that, select your name and choose my profile. Your profile shows the current personal information, the clubs that you belong to, your login and password, your address and privacy and consents. If you want to change your personal information, click on edit. You can change your name and give a reason why you're changing a name. It could be due to a change in marital status or maybe the club officer made an error while submitting an application or you want to be known by an alternate name. In a similar manner, you can change other personal information that is stored in your toss masters profile. Once you are satisfied, click save contact information. The next thing you should review is your privacy and consents. Click on edit and indicate whether you like to be contacted by email or traditional mail by phone and so forth. Once you're satisfied with your privacy settings, click save privacy and consent. Once you're satisfied with your profile settings, click on your name and select my home. Now that your profile is set, the next step is to choose your path. Toss masters offers different parts and the part that you choose will depend upon your personal objectives. To understand the different parts that are available to you, scroll down and select the learning hub. The learning hub is divided into three sections. You can choose a new path or you can view the navigator, which is like the manual of Pathways or if you have already selected a path, you can directly jump to what we call the Basecamp. Basecamp is nothing but the online learning management system. If you are selecting your path for the first time, don't worry about this $20. Your membership includes one free path and typically a path can take anything between one to two years to complete. To choose your path, click here. The Pathways Education program is offered in several languages. Select the language that is applicable to you. Next, choose how you like to access your education material, either as a digital resource or as printed materials. Printed materials incur an additional cost of $25 and if you are not staying in US, you may have problems with the shipping. For most of us, the choice should be digital resources. Scroll down. Now decide how you will select your path. You have two options. One is to simply select a path or second to take an assessment. If you have sat with your club members or with your mentor and have already identified a specific path that you would like to pursue, you can choose the first option. If you are unsure which path is right for you, I highly recommend you take the second route, which is to take an assessment. Click Continue. Select the language for your assessment and click on the start button. You will be asked a series of questions about your goals and objectives. In this question, I should choose three topics from the list that interest me the most. Let's say I love public speaking, I love coaching, and I love change management. Click Next. From the list of three that you have chosen, now choose the one that has the highest rating. Let's say I select coaching, click Next. Try to answer these questions as honestly as possible. Once you have completed the assessment, you will be given a choice of three paths to select. Based on the responses that I provided, I have been recommended innovative planning as the first choice or leadership development or dynamic leadership. If I want to learn more about what each path does, click on the link here and it will give you a summary of the objectives of this path. If I want to know the details of the project that I included in this path, click View all projects. You can see that the path innovative planning is broken down into five levels starting from level one made up of four projects, level two made up of three projects, level three made up of one project and some electives. Level four also has one mandatory project and electives. And finally, level five is what we call demonstrating expertise made up of two projects and electives. Once you're satisfied, click on the back arrow, choose the path that you want to pursue and click Continue. Confirm your choice by clicking Continue once again and scroll down and confirm your order. Once you're done, click on your name and click My home. Now that you have selected your path, it's time to start working on it. To do that, scroll down and go to Basecamp. As mentioned, Basecamp is your learning management system. If you are a member of only one club, you will be directly taken to your Basecamp. In my case, I'm a member of two clubs. So I have to choose which club I want to use for my Basecamp. I will select Quit Challenges and this is my Basecamp. Basecamp is a place where we can review and complete our projects and also do other learning tasks. For example, if you want to give or receive feedback from your club members, you can use this option My Feedback. You can review all the feedback that you have received from your club members. The My Badges section shows you all the awards that you earn in your Toastmaster journey. The My Document section is a storage space where you can store your documents. Typically, the feedback that you receive from your evaluators can be uploaded and stored here for future reference. Under the Tutorials and Resources section, you will find lots of training resources that you can access. The Speech Evaluation section holds all the evaluation resources for Toastmaster projects. For example, if you are going to deliver your first project known as the Icebreaker project, you can come here, select Icebreaker and click on the Launch button to download this resource. It's a PDF file that can be filled online. Typically, you would download this form and send it to your evaluator to provide feedback for your Icebreaker. And finally, the Parts and Learnings opens up your Education transcript. If you are a new member, you would probably have just one path in your curriculum. In my case, I have two active paths. Let me open my path Motivational Strategies. As I mentioned earlier in the video, each path has five levels and each level has multiple projects. If I select level one, we can see that this level has four projects. Icebreaker, writing a speech with purpose, introduction to vocal variety and body language and evaluation and feedback. If I go to level two, I can see that it has three projects. When I click on level three, I can see that this level has one project and electives. From the details, I can see that there are 14 available electives and the requirement is to complete any two of the electives. To learn more about the electives, click View Details and these are all the electives of level three. When I click on level four, I can see that there is one mandatory project and when it comes to electives, there are eight electives available, but I need to complete any one of them. Click View Details to see the available electives. At level five, we have a mandatory project, six available electives of which I have to choose any one. Click on View Details to see the details of level five electives. Once you complete all the five levels, there is a final project called a Path Completion project where you reflect on your learnings. It is not mandatory to do these projects in sequence. However, if this is your first path or if you are new to Toastmasters, it is highly recommended that you do these projects in sequence. That means you should first go to level one, complete all the level one projects, then move to level two, three, four and five. Completing any project is a three-step process. For example, the first project that you will deliver in Toastmasters is called as an Icebreaker project. To complete this project, the first step is to understand and prepare for the project. How do we do that? You first click the Activate button. This will activate the project and indicate to you that you are currently working on this project. Click on the Launch button and this will launch the learning material for that project. Review the learning resource that is available to you by clicking on Begin. The learning material is a combination of theory, multimedia, as well as interactive quizzes. If there is a video, click on the Play button and it will launch the video. To move to the next page, use the Forward Navigation. To learn about a specific topic, click this arrow. Once you are done with the page, move to the next page and so forth. For every project that you complete, you should do an assessment of your skills before delivering the project and after delivering the project. In this case, we are preparing to deliver the Icebreaker project. So assess how do you feel when you are giving a speech? Do you feel relaxed? Let's say I feel very nervous when it is my turn to give a speech. So I will assess myself as one. After all, that's why we have joined Toastmasters to improve our public speaking skills, haven't we? Click Next. Do I understand the structure of a speech? Let's say three. Complete all the questions as honestly as possible. And when you have completed your self-assessment, click on the Submit button. This will help you to evaluate how well you did after you delivered your Icebreaker speech in front of your club members. Close the window and move ahead to the next page. Make sure you read all the material carefully. Once you have understood the objectives of your project, prepare a speech and start rehearsing it in front of the mirror, in front of your friends or in front of your family. Once you feel confident that you can deliver your speech in front of the club members, contact your vice president education to schedule your speech in a club meeting. Your VP education will assign an evaluator for you. Make sure you communicate with your evaluator. Let him know what you have prepared and if you are looking for any specific feedback, communicate the same to your evaluator. During the preparation phase, you should also be in constant communication with your mentor who will support you and guide you and make sure that you deliver a great speech in front of the club members. You can download the entire project as a PDF file by clicking on print my project. This is handy if you want to read the project on your tablet or on your mobile. A few days before the club meeting, you can download the evaluation resource and send this resource to your evaluator. After you deliver your speech, he or she will fill this evaluation form and send it back to you. At this point, we can close this learning module and go back to base camp. Step two of completing your project is to deliver your speech at your club. If your club meets in person, then you will get an opportunity to stand at a podium and deliver your speech. If your club meets online, then you will deliver an online speech. The third and the last step in completing a project is to come back to base camp, launch the project and then use this dropdown to select the last part, which is assess your skills after. Remember, this is a self assessment. You will answer the same questions that you had answered at the beginning of the project after delivering my icebreaker. Let's say I feel less nervous than I was before. I will select to answer the rest of the questions. And when you're ready, click on the submit button and this will mark your project as completed. It will also give you an assessment of whether this project has helped you by comparing your before and after assessment. Based on your personal assessment, you can identify if there is any improvement after you delivered your speech. Click on the close button. Finally, go through the checklist to make sure that you have completed all the required elements of a project, which is to review your learning, deliver your speech, receive your evaluation from your evaluator that you have completed the assessment after you have delivered the speech and that completes the project. The status of your project has now changed to evaluate. Click on evaluate. Here you will submit a short survey, provide your feedback. If you have any additional comments, you can enter them here and when you're ready, click on submit final answers. This project is now complete. You can move on to the next project. And that is all there is to it. As you progress from one project to the next or from one level to the next, the projects increase in complexity. We are expected to demonstrate not only communication skills, but leadership skills. Toastmasters is an organization that is committed to building leaders and to become a great leader, you need to be a great communicator. I hope you found this video useful and I wish you all the best in your Toastmaster journey.