Committee Member training program name is subotimal

My Scouting Tools
1

In the BSA Learn Center:

  • If your position is Committee Chair, your training course’s name is Scouts BSA - Troop Committee Chair - Position Specific Training.
  • If your position is Committee Member, your training course’s name is Scouts BSA - Troop Committee Position - Position Specific Training.

Why is the Troop Committee Member training program called Troop Committee Position instead of Troop Committee Member?

I am my troop’s training chair and am realizing I need to advise people of this oddity. I can be confusing to people who are not intimately familiar with how BSA units are organized.

2

The word “position” is only used once for each course title.

But it looks like inconsistent placement of the hyphen (Position Specific Training vs. Position - Specific Training).

If leaders look at the pictures, can they tell which learning plan they need to enroll in?

Troop Committee Chair training
Troop Committee Chair training417×508 17.8 KB

Troop Committee member training
Troop Committee member training418×506 17.5 KB

3

Ah, I see what you mean.

Still, it’s not consistent. It makes most sense for position-specific training to be named after the position it is responsive to.

There is no position named “Committee”. There is a position named “Committee Member”. Ergo, position-specific training for Committee Members should include “Committee Member” in the title.

4

The strangeness is due to registration database terms and codes v.s. program functional roles.

1 Like
5

I totally get that legacy terms and “behind the scenes” stuff can add complexity and inconsistency. However, when speaking to users, such as in websites, it’s typical to use information that “translates” legacy or inconsistent internal stuff to consistently understandable terms. I hope BSA has the capability of using consistent terminology in user-facing content like this.

6

There is a Language of Scouting document/page that tries to bring some uniformity to things, but like a lot of things now, training feedback largely has to go through your council for anything to get done, and even then as I understand it, national is closing council tickets for real issues pretty often so lots of persistence and knowing a council person that will bother trying.