These changes were released 11th April 2024
The summary of the changes to the layout:
- Removed ‘Today days’ and ‘Day no’, and added ‘Setting out time’, ‘Start point’ and ‘Start GR’
- Removed ‘Expedition level’
- Changed ‘Journey time’ to ‘Leg time’
- Removed the ‘Escape notes’ column and merged it into the ‘Leg description’ column
- Removed the bearings column
- Added ‘Emergency plan’ box
- Moved ‘Supervisor’s name, location, and tel no’ box
- Change ‘Activity for your aim’ to ‘Activity for your goal’
- Headings across multiple pages
Rationale for removing the bearings column
The removal of having a dedicated bearing column was a decision made after a discussion with our various staff members who came to the consensus that the LO's and people they supported were not using bearings on their route cards, so having a dedicated column was taking up unnecessary space.
However, should you or anyone else you know wish to supplement your route cards with bearings, you can add them into the Leg Description.
How the new layout looks:
New feature: Toggle between 6 and 8 figure Grid Reference (GR) digits.
Currently, our Route Cards default to 8 figure GR digits as this is what OS Explore uses, and there is no way of changing this to 6 figure GR digits within eDofE. This has long been a cause of frustration, as most people are trained on 6 figure GR digits, but with this new feature, route card will default to 6 figure GR digits, and the user has the option to switch between 6 and 8 digits!
The toggle is found towards the top left of your route card:
This allows you to even download the PDF of the route card with 6 figure GR digits, and then go back and change it to the 8 figures, save the changes and then download the new PDF route card- so you can have best of both worlds.
If you have any issues or further queries, please get in touch with edofe@dofe.org