Background

Why are we undertaking the work to develop materials for our Trail Badges?  Trail Badges contain a number of concepts to learn, skills to develop, and items to research, explain, and demonstrate.  While Trail Life currently, offers a handbook with lots of good information, that information isn't directly linked to Trail Badge requirements.  Trail Life USA's current stance is that Trail Badge materials are to be intentionally vague - they don't wish to push info from the top down.  The determination of how satisfactory a Trail Badge is completed is intentionally left up to the individual troop.  

The position makes sense for a new national organization, but leaves a possible gap for troops to consider.  Without provided "answers" different adults will have different interpretations when boys come to complete sign-offs.  This can lead to hurt feelings and questions about the consistency of the program.  Additionally, new adults, who may not have much knowledge of the skills asked for in Trail Life, don't have much of a resource to get ramped up, making it more difficult for someone interested in becoming a leader to quickly become capable in training Trailmen (and perhaps other adults) and performing sign-offs.

Our Troop has decided to develop a set of "agreed upon answers," that we can use to help ensure our training is more consistent and our answers are equal and fair for our Trailmen.

Audience

• The primary audience for our Trail Badge materials are troop leaders for the purposes of completing sign offs.  The goal is that they will use the materials to help them self-learn the Trail Badge and feel confident that their sign-offs match complete answers that are aligned with our Troop's desired standards. 
• The second audience is adults in the Troop looking to:
• Be aware of the material so they understand what the troop is expecting with sign-offs.
• Practice skills at home with their son.
• Learn and know the material so they can perhaps teach it themselves.
• The final audience is Trailmen.  They need to be able to understand and believe the answers.  They need to be able to use these materials in order to complete requirements on their own and then down the road be able to teach other Trailmen.

How Much Material to Collect - or How Thorough of an Answer?

While it can sometimes be tempting to collect all sorts of interesting information, the goal is to provide a simple, but well supported and explained "answer" to a given Trail Badge requirement.   This helps for all the reasons discussed above.   Built answers should:

• Represent a satisfactory answer to a given requirement written to the level of a teenage boy.
• Short and concise, but include enough supporting documentation and arguments to help the answer make sense and be understandable by a teenage boy.
• Be written as though leaders, adults, and Trailmen will continually use the answer as reference.
• Be written to reflect that Trailmen will use the answer to practice and/or commit it to their minds on their own. 

Built answers should NOT: 

• Contain additional information outside the amount of scope of the specific requirement being addressed.  
• Ever be thought of as the "ultimate encyclopedic answer" to a given topic.  Admittedly, no one will complain if sometimes you can't help but include some additional information, but it should be limited as to not dilute the answer or make the answer excessively long.  We we should also appreciate that what we create doesn't need to be 100% perfect to be usable.  We can make the materials good to start and then continually review and improve. 

Our Process 

It should be noted that everything we're describing on these pages is brand new and being proposed by one person, therefore they are suggested guidelines!  Perhaps once there's been time with the process, and/or our culture seems to be aligned on it, we'll eventually decide that these suggestions become how we operate, but until that day, we should view this entire page as a list of suggestions.

• The goal is to have a volunteer "own" a Trail Badge.  They take the lead role in researching, collecting, organizing, finalizing, and eventually, possibly improving the content.  
• Materials are collected and organized only on this wiki and under the specific Trail Badge pages under the Advancement category.  
• Materials are uploaded and pages are created by the owner and/or helpers they want to use, under a folder category for the Trail Badge which exists under the "Advancement" category.
• Materials related to the topic should all be organized under the given Trail Badge.   
• Trail Badge worksheets are created for each Trail Badge and are intended to help the Trailmen collect and prepare answers for review with their Trail Guide or other leader able to perform the sign off.  They are not intended to contain the answers.  Worksheets for now should be created in .doc format and posted in .pdf format.
• When it's most practical, create "answer" material in new wiki pages instead of .doc or .pdf files, because they don't require additional computer programs to work with them, they can be easily modified and linked to, and they can make the material more easily accessible on devices.   This helps pages be concise and form natural patterns of organization.
• General concepts should be contained on their own wiki page outside of the Trail Badge itself and then referenced by links to the Trail Badge wiki page.  This aids with finding the concepts when the Trail Badge that covers the topic is forgotten or unknown.  Currently, we maintain topics that the trail badge pages reference under "The Field Guide".
• When "Done," the Trail Badge materials should become fairly static.   If another leader would like to make changes, those should be floated to the group before changing the wiki.  

What Sources Should You Use? 

• The Trail Life Handbook
• This should be the FIRST source of information when the answer exists.  Other sources should only be used when the handbook provides no specific answer. 
• When referencing the TL Handbook, it's suitable to site the page only.  Most should have their handbook handy.  Be sure to reference the Handbook version, because content on page numbers is likely to move from edition to edition.
• Internet Material.  Again, lots of good information.  When choosing Web sites to collect text, images, documents, etc., be sure to select original and the most reputable sources when possible.  For ex. when choosing how to present the flag, a flag history site might appear to have good answers, but a .gov site on this topic will contain the most correct information.  When reviewing more "outdoor skills" you may have to collect from multiple sources to ensure that what is found is generally agreed upon.  If the Web site is one people might know commonly, it is likely suitable.  Sketchy looking Web sites might have good information, but material should be cross-referenced with other sites.
• Again, always be sure to cite the Web site where you collected the material, or ensure the document contains info regarding where it came from. 
• Whatever the source, BE 100% CERTAIN to also include proper reference and the credit to the material. 

Definition of Done 

Our definition of "Done" is that the owner believes:

• That an adult leader could use the materials in the wiki to teach and review sign-offs and a new adult could find and teach themselves enough to complete the badge.  If you're not sure, ask one of the adult leaders.
• When the owner feels the Trail Badge development process is "done," they present it to the Troop Leaders for review, possible changes, and sign off.  
• Review the Trail Badge and in the Meeting Activities section, create items that can be practiced or performed in a troop meeting.  These will typically be "demonstrate..." requirements, but other requirements might also make sense.  These will become activities planned out and used in program time.  Suggest a game if it seems a game would apply. 

Review Process

• Once the "owner" feels the badge is complete, email the troop leaders and request review.  Allow reasonable time for review - ex. a week.  Troop Leaders are all registered leaders, but don't include Committee members.
• Changes should be considered, discussed, and performed before "closing" the badge.
• Closing does not mean no further changes can be performed, but additional changes should be discussed with troop leaders.