VTK As A Planner: What Do Leaders Think?

 This is the second post in my series about what Girl Scout leaders think of VTK, the online leader dashboard.  It is the result of a survey promulgated on Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders.  As I said in the first post, I think the people who responded tend to me more experienced than the average Girl Scout leader and more likely to go beyond the obvious when planning meetings.

VTK--Volunteer Tool Kit--is GSUSA's online tool for Girl Scout Leaders.  It contains meeting plans for the current badges and Journeys and those are discussed extensively in my other post.  It can also be used for planning meetings, keeping attendance, communicating with parents and submitting your yearly financial report (if your council has activated that module).  

This post is going to focus on VTK, as opposed to the meeting plans in VTK.

How Do People Use VTK and Does It Work?

People were asked which best described their use of VTK.  24.8% said they don't use it.  40.8% use it as little as possible.  19.2% use it as a resource for meeting plans, 3.7% said they use it as a planner and 6% use it as a resource and a planner.  

When asked to describe their experience with VTK, only 3.2% had never tried it.  24% had tried it a time or two and found it wanting.  47.2% had tried it on and off over the years but didn't like it.  12.9% said they used it regularly but didn't like it and 6.6% used it regularly and thought it worked well.  

Next, I asked people to rate VTK as a website--to assume that the activities in the plans were absolutely wonderful.  3.4% said it was easy to use and a great dashboard for leaders.  13.1% said it was adequate, 61.9% said it needs work and 15.1% said they hadn't fooled with it enough to have an opinion.  There were a few other non-complimentary responses, including one that I've heard expressed other places--that she wanted an app, not a website.  

Reader Comments about VTK

I asked for comments on VTK as a website and here is a representative sample:

• Don't like having to add a badge to the  year plan to see the badge plan
  
  
• Logs you out too quickly
  
  
• The website is poorly designed, difficult to navigate, doesn’t accommodate troops that meet once a month to earn badges
  
  
• The system, itself, is clonky. It requires my to log in twice (could just be my council's thing), has way too many dropdown boxes with the activities itself, and doesn't work well when you are trying to access it in windowed mode or on a cell phone/tablet.
  
  
• It didn't have anything for my CSA girls when it came out so now I continue using resources that I had to find on my own. (note:  I will say this has changed)
  
  
• It should be short and sweet with “add on options”
  
  
• When you try to rearrange lesson plans it takes a long time to move just one plan. You can’t move plans for a whole badge at a time.
  
  
• Sometimes it lets you do something, and the next time you log in, half the work is gone. or you can't rearrange your weekly meetings (but it let you do it before!). only sometimes the content is useful, so why bother trying to figure the rest out? seems like it should be fantastic wonderful awesome, but every year I give it another shot, waste a couple hours trying and give up.
  
  
• It’s a nice planner. Beyond that it’s too cumbersome
  
  
• Why does the history of girls accomplishments disappear? Why can't I go backwards and add meetings we've already done?
  
  
• There are NO translations to Spanish. It feels very culturally “ white” vanilla.
  
  
• The addition of the detailed meeting plans this past year have made all the difference. I am much more confident when I plan a badge and am not afraid to branch out of my comfort zone now. When I started as a leader the detailed scripts were not available, and planning was very stressful. I often change things to fit our needs, but the start is critical for me.
  
  
• It’s clunky, slow, and in my experience it hangs & crashed often.
  
  
• I want more from it, but it works fine as is
  
  
• The auto-set plan for the level is neat.
  
  
• I wish the entire badge was all under one icon. I wish it were easier to delete badges from the year plan. Not all badges are included. Searching for badges can be improved.
  
  
• It’s difficult to move meetings around and schedule them when you want. The system won’t let you mix and match badges, even when sometimes they have related requirements.
  
  
• I -HATE- that we are forced online/referred to VTK when what we need is training(non-existent in GSDH) and human interaction.
  
  
• Actually planning with it isn’t easy as it makes assumptions about your meeting details and forces planning awkwardly.
  
  
• Will be more user friendly than VTK currently is? Like just click a badge to expand out the requirements first, then link to full badge details - This would be much better than the format used with the current VTK.
  
  
• The VTK is not user intuitive at all, in addition, the meeting plans are too long, not age appropriate and too difficult to download. Even the "email" function is poorly organized and doesn't allow you to sort girls by name or grade.
  
  
• It requires so much clicking to accomplish anything and isn't flexible for multilevel troops.
  
  
• No way to delete multiple badges/meetings at once
  
  
• It is a good resource to get ideas.  It is not easy to navigate.  I wish I could see the detail plans before adding items to my year.  I also wish I can pick and choose from multiple levels to create an agenda in one place.  I would also like to be able to add detail agendas for meetings created outside of VTK 
  
  
• I'm not able to use technology during in person meetings.  I still have to print everything.  Things are too clunky to use on the phone. 
  
  
•  I have been a trainer for VTK and played with it extensively. I find it ridiculous and a pain to use. It’s fine if you want a quick resource to send a parent or older girl who needs to fill in leading a meeting, but otherwise it’s an overly complex planner that’s a pain to use and even harder to modify. At least it doesn’t crash when I put in weekly multi-troop meetings like it did the first few years! But I also stopped using it even as a planner any more.  
  
  
• It is simple to navigate and the resources for the badge are available with the plans. Everything is easy to follow and even someone who is not “tech savvy” should be capable of using it.
  
  
• Access is too limited. Girl Scouts is girl led so girls and parents need access too
  
  
• The inability of VTK as a website to work consistently correctly with iPads and mobile devices is extremely frustrating as it has been affected by the update done late 2020. It is also difficult to merge multilevel activities for various badges.
• It's extremely glitchy this year. I can complete about 3 things each time before getting a notice that I "don't have authorized access" It's also frustrating that my emails to parents don't go through anymore. My parents have grown to watch for those email reminders about meetings and no longer receive them.
• The website itself isn't the issue, the content is.
• It started with listing the girls in the troop alphabetically by FIRST name with no way to even change that filter. I like to see sister groups together. The older the girls got, the more they started planning and leading the meetings. There was not a good way to get them VTK access. I’ve stepped down from Leader to Co-Leader and I don’t even have the same access now.
  
  
• Obviously personal information should be protected, but it's unbelievable that badge and other program material is locked away from adults who might be able to help, if only they could do the research

My Comments

I'm one who does not use VTK as a planner, though I do use the meeting plans. To make it easier to access the meeting plans, I have created a year plan with every badge and Journey I'm considering for the year. For my multi-level troop, my year plan has over 60 meetings.

I haven't tried to use it as a planner, as my plans, when I write them down at all, tend to be very short lists of activities so that I don't forget something.  

I think a search feature, where I could put in "paint" and see every badge activity that included paint would be awesome--I'm working on the painting badge with the Brownies, can the Juniors do the same thing and count it for one of their badges?  

Also it isn't uncommon for me to work on two or more badges at the same meeting.  I don't think anyone needs more than one snack per meeting so when we do the Snacks badge, we also do a requirement or two from another badge; VTK doesn't facilitate this.  

I'll talk about parent communications in another post.