Swimming Skills Assessment

[Trace Malinowski]

What are these opinions based upon? Is there some research you can cite that shows that "divers are not comfortable in the water"? That just seems like an impossibly big generalization to be making about "divers".

While I can't tell you what these opinions are based upon for those making the claim, I don't support those opinions. I think divers are comfortable in the water. IMHO, few heads of agencies are out in the trenches and only receive calls about negative experiences. No one calls a training agency to say, "Hey, Wow! We had some great divers on board today from agency XYZ."

The thing is, I have trouble believing this because if I look around me and see the divers *I* encounter then I would say, in fact, that the vast majority of them *are* comfortable in the water. I can't seem to make the connection to how you reached the exact opposite conclusion.

I didn't reach that conclusion. It is the opinion of other industry insiders. I agree with you.

Clearsly, there will always be some divers/students who are not comfortable even after the OW course ends and I believe that inadequate training has something to do with that. However, the main problem I see isn't even so much the course format or the standards, which are just a list of things they need to be able to do, but the mere and simple fact that not enough instructors say "no". No to their employers whose interest isn't always in delivering a quality product, and "no" to students who are on time schedules but are unable to achieve the standard in the time typically alloted for it.

Agreed.

You seem to want to approach it as an issue with standards but there are some things you and your colleagues are missing here:

1) Standards, no matter how high they are set, will not necessarily lead to a quality delivery if the instructor is not in a position (due to time, pressures, lack of ability etc etc) to deliver that quality where the rubber meets the road. Every process manager in the world (project managers, engineers, teachers .... etc etc) will tell you that process adherence is only a small part of delivering quality and in most cases not even *close* to being the most important driver of product quality.

2) There seems to be a massive disconnect on the WRSTC level with respect to making assumptions about what people want without testing those assumptions via quality marketing research. If standards are being set (and then lowered) based on "intuitions" and "assumptions" then there is a lack of professionalism at the top that is completely unacceptable. If you want to improve training, then I would start here by allocating a budget to ongoing marketing research and by making it a requirement for WRSTC board members to also be active instructors. The disconnect with what's happening on the ground has to be dealt with.

Again we agree. I think you misread one of my posts in this thread or perhaps my writing wasn't clear? That's not sarcasm. You are such a critical thinker that if I've got you reading my position as 180 degrees from where I stand, I may have written poorly. I'm against too little training time, lowering standards, and poor instructor standards and training.

I like this ambition a LOT but let's say for a moment that you're right and that cost and "instant gratification" are the main barriers stopping people from getting into the sport. How would you change things without driving up costs and/or delaying gratification?

Isn't this the main issue? Lowering the bar makes it easier for people to make the decision to try it, and evidently increases revenue across the board even though retention goes down and we know that people who take con-ed courses end up spending a lot more money on scuba diving.

Thinking about it like this, from a purely profit based point of view, it doesn't seem to matter at all that some people are unconfortable in the water... as long as they tried it and paid. I'm not saying that this is right, but it does seem to be how the WRSTC is looking at it.
R..

Yes, and we know who really runs the RSTC and WRSTC.

I think the DIR agencies such as GUE and UTD have redefined what entry level divers are capable of learning. a typical GUE fundies course is 4 days. I prefer a training time of 6 - 8 class/pool sessions + 5 OW dives with 1 day spent snorkeling. But, if we are going to shorten dive training to half a week, I think the industry needs to explore a skill set similar to what we are calling TDI Intro to Tech, GUE-F, UTD Essentials, PSAI Advanced Buoyancy, PDIC Tek Prep, etc., as what an open water class could be.

 

[Diver0001]

I mentioned this in my previous response but wanted to emphasize it again:

It is of course true that more time with quality instruction creates better divers. On the other hand, my experience is that you can create a tremendous increase in student skill in the same amount of time if you use a different instructional approach.

This can't be emphasized enough.

The delivery of quality depends to a very great extent on "how" the instructor approaches the job of teching and not "how long" it takes.

We've had many discussions over the years wherein people have said "students need more time" or "standards aren't high enough" whereby some instructors took great pride in how long/difficult their training was. However, in teaching (and I am *no* expert here, just a simple scuba instructor) I've seen that there is a big difference between "efficiency" and "duration".

In terms of efficiency I would think that the most efficient instructors need probably about 1/2 (maybe a 1/3) of the time to deliver the same quality of diving instruction than the least efficient. There is probably a lower boundary under which even excellent instructors can't get acceptable results but if your instructor is "efficient" then student talent and not instructor talent is the main driver for the time it takes.

In other words, longer courses are not always better courses. In fact, I would go so far as to say that an instructor who needs an exceptionally long time to teach a basic OW course probably is spending much of that time (at the student's expense) fixing his/her own mistakes.

I've seen excellent examples of this in (of all places) Egypt. People often have very negative things to say about resort courses but I audited part of a Rescue course given by a very talented instructor when I was there some time ago and was profoundly impressed with how efficiently he was able to get his point across to students in such a way that it was clear that they had learned it. It was WAY better than anything I had seen up to that point in time.

At the time I was an inexperienced instructor but that image never left me and it set me (thankfully early on in my career) on a quest for finding the most efficient ways of doing things so I didn't waste so much of my student's time waiting for me to get it right.

In the intervening time I've clamped onto people like John who is clearly a wise and talented teacher and most of the time I spend on scubaboard when I'm not hacking at Trace is spent on a quest to learn better ways of doing things from the other instructors here. To give one example, I'll pick the mask skill. When I first started teaching I used the same technique to teach the mask skill that I was taught and with the same results: a variety of "typical" problems and usually one or two students in every course who needed "extra" help. What I discovered in time, however, is that *I* was the one in need of extra help and once I picked up on a few key ways to improve my results I changed my technique for teaching the mask skill and now I rarely have any students who find it difficult.

The details aren't important but the process is. What John is saying above is *so* true. In terms of quality/efficiency, the *approach* and not the standards are the most important thing.

R..

 

[Diver0001]

I think the DIR agencies such as GUE and UTD have redefined what entry level divers are capable of learning. a typical GUE fundies course is 4 days. I prefer a training time of 6 - 8 class/pool sessions + 5 OW dives with 1 day spent snorkeling. But, if we are going to shorten dive training to half a week, I think the industry needs to explore a skill set similar to what we are calling TDI Intro to Tech, GUE-F, UTD Essentials, PSAI Advanced Buoyancy, PDIC Tek Prep, etc., as what an open water class could be.

It seems as though I misread you. Sorry for that.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when you put *that* idea on the table...LOL

R..

 

[Antagonist]

My wife can not swim at all unless she has a life jacket on, but she is a good diver. She has the mechanics down but I think she is just afraid of water with a life jacket on. As a matter of fact i know she is because she tell me all the time she is only afraid without a life jacket on.

 

[Diver0001]

How did she get through the swimming test?

R..

 

[AfterDark]

Having learned to dive in the old days I was a very strong swimmer, one needed to be to dive back then. These days pushing 60 I'm barely an average swimmer and I'm grateful for the BC and other gear that allows me to keep diving. Slow and steady....

 

[boulderjohn]

I think the DIR agencies such as GUE and UTD have redefined what entry level divers are capable of learning. a typical GUE fundies course is 4 days.I prefer a training time of 6 - 8 class/pool sessions + 5 OW dives with 1 day spent snorkeling. But, if we are going to shorten dive training to half a week, I think the industry needs to explore a skill set similar to what we are calling TDI Intro to Tech, GUE-F, UTD Essentials, PSAI Advanced Buoyancy, PDIC Tek Prep, etc., as what an open water class could be.

This is misleading.

GUE fundies may be 4 days, but it is not for entry level divers. A diver who expects to pass this class (and many don't) needs to have pretty good skills going into it, and those who don't should take a class called GUE Primer first and then practice to get up to that prerequisite level. I would bet most recreational divers who are comfortable in the water on their annual vacations and thoroughly enjoying themselves while diving would not pass fundies.

You also cite UTD Essentials, which is a similar course and requires significant previous training. UTD has beginning OW instruction as well, and although I have never seen it taught, according to the course description it takes less time to complete than a typical RSTC-based course.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

This is misleading.

GUE fundies may be 4 days, but it is not for entry level divers. A diver who expects to pass this class (and many don't) needs to have pretty good skills going into it, and those who don't should take a class called GUE Primer first and then practice to get up to that prerequisite level. I would bet most recreational divers who are comfortable in the water on their annual vacations and thoroughly enjoying themselves while diving would not pass fundies.

You also cite UTD Essentials, which is a similar course and requires significant previous training. UTD has beginning OW instruction as well, and although I have never seen it taught, according to the course description it takes less time to complete than a typical RSTC-based course.

John,

The skills are the same for entry level DIR diving. The expected performance standards are higher. Some DIR instructors expect unrealistic performance standards in the time frame allotted by the course at any level. My thinking is that these systems can be the basis of modern entry-level diving with more realistic performance standards taught between open water and advanced courses. I used the GUE-F course as an example because many SB members know what that course is about compared to Rec 1 & Primer.

Current GUE recreational training does not teach important specialties such as night diving, search & recovery, advanced navigation, a thorough diver rescue program, snorkeling/freediving, etc.

I have a collection of books that had been developed for PDIC by Marcus Werneck (GUE instructor & former Director of PDIC Brasil) that did just that. He developed an excellent DIR approach from open water through every applicable specialty at the recreational level. It was also how he taught diving.

I do the something similar which I don't have time to post right now. But, a good bit of "primer" education comes from snorkeling and working on key propulsion techniques.

 

[RU4SKUBA]

As a lifeguard trainer and WSI of twenty+ years its hard not notice the lack of swimming skills in an aquatic activity that's done under the surface of the water. Don't get me wrong, I don't think everybody's swimming stinks --of course it doesn't-- but there is a significant proportion of divers whose swimming skills were clearly overlooked or standards hedged.

Those prospective students who have to keep their faces out of the water, can't get water in their ears or eyes, freak out if they swallow a little water, and take 7 seconds on every pool length to catch their breath... well, they really ought to wash out and get remediated on those skills. This is obvious and I'm sure nobody really disputes this, but in practice it works out differently.

What isn't so obvious is what might happen someday down the road with a diver holding a certification you issued and what might happen as a result of that accident.

Sure you have liability protection, but if the victim of a drowning accident has weak swimming skills they will have a pretty easy time undermining your case. If they took swim lessons to remediate, they can subpoena the WSI and use their testimony to cripple your evaluations of the victims swimming skills. If you hedged even just a little, they'll bring in friends to testify their swimming was not so hot, or show the victim never had swim lessons to begin with.

You're screwed either way, unless the prospective student is evaluated with a critical eye and not given ANY leeway on tests. If they take 5 seconds to breathe at the wall, repeat. If they stop half way to clear water out of their noses, repeat. If they touch the wall, even just a little, repeat. Grab the lines, repeat.

Its your only liability protection, to stick precisely to the swim test standards or exceed them by requiring an additional snorkel test, but for heaven's sake don't hedge on swim requirements. You never know when that call might come from a lawyer who wishes to represent you in your new civil suit.

 

[Frosty]

Can someone really get scuba certified without being able to swim confidently?
That sounds just wrong to me.
I did notice that the Padi OW course assumes you are a reasonable swimmer. From the sound of things that a heck of an assumption.
Is it a case of -"we want your money" so such a basic skill is left till the student has committed heavilly (financialy)?
A cynical viewpoint I guess but frankly I would have thought the first skill the student should demonstrate is that they can swim 200m in swim gear (no dive equipment) and that they can stay on the surface for 10 minutes.