Diver Training, Has It Really Been Watered Down???

[ofg-1]

 

[Neilwood]

In my part of the country, water is cold, dark, and in some places fast. Most new divers don't meet WRSTC requirements in that they need to be babysat with a pro or experienced diver. Most don't know how to plan a dive really. All agency materials are pretty poor in that respect IMHO.

That is a sad indictment of the instructors and QA, not so much the training materials. All instructors should be training to the point of mastery - the issue is that this is a very subjective test. Some instructors will say that one successful demonstration of a skill is mastery, others will require multiple successful demos.

I guess I was pretty lucky with mine - I feel that my instructor taught me enough to go out in UK waters (often green and low vis) with enough confidence to plan a dive and carry it out safely and also to have the confidence to call a dive when it didn't feel right. The expectation in the UK is that you WILL dive in independent pairs and both divers had better be able to plan their dives, lead/follow as required and sort their own kit out - most of us don't have DM's or instructors to sort out any foul ups.

My experience has grown with regards to types of dives such as drift, boat, wreck, warm water, blue water (which is a whole lot different to cold where light fades fast), surge, currents, negative entry etc but the main requiements were there from the course.

 

[CT-Rich]

I never had a DM on a dive until I went to Grand Cayman last year. I took a couple of newish divers on a night dive last weekend, do they really need a class for that?

 

[Jcp2]

I don’t think a class is needed if there is an experienced companion, but for many people, that experienced companion might be a hired guide, so why not take the class since the incremental additional cost might be small compared to the entire cost of the dive itself (especially for vacation divers)?

 

[caydiver]

I think it is even more about the shop than the individuals who teach. I know of shops who have told their instructors not to fail students. Two recently one shop. Both left because they were disgusted. They were not there at the same time and did not know each other. The op claims a high success rate certifying divers — mmmmm! They pay a lot for advertising and I often read comments from people that used them. Problem is if you are a new diver and certified with one op, what is your baseline? When our kids were certifying we spoke to friends who worked in the industry about who would be the best to teach them to become good divers, not just to pass them on. There are some instructors who seem okay with the churn them out attitude but thankfully there are many more who don’t.

 

[Bob DBF]

I was Certified in 1987. The training wasn’t very good. The manuals were virtually nonexistent. There were few external sources of information.

I hope you mean 1957, because after that The New Science of Skin and SCUBA Diving came out, which was one of the best recreational scuba training manuals written. It and the US Navy diving manual got me through 17 years of diving, including some of what now is considered tech diving. By '80 PADI had a manual good enough that my NAUI instructor used it, rather than the NAUI manual for his classes. Either one could be used today without missing anything important taught now, and may include information from more advanced training.

I'm not a fan of the new PADI picture books they put out now, but...


Bob

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

That is a sad indictment of the instructors and QA, not so much the training materials. All instructors should be training to the point of mastery - the issue is that this is a very subjective test. Some instructors will say that one successful demonstration of a skill is mastery, others will require multiple successful demos.

I guess I was pretty lucky with mine - I feel that my instructor taught me enough to go out in UK waters (often green and low vis) with enough confidence to plan a dive and carry it out safely and also to have the confidence to call a dive when it didn't feel right. The expectation in the UK is that you WILL dive in independent pairs and both divers had better be able to plan their dives, lead/follow as required m

I agree that materials keep improving and I think today they’re pretty good. I was impressed with the results of my students using SSI's open water online materials as all students really understood the dive theory. The only thing that I see lacking in the training materials is dive planning and that’s region specific . That’s why I wrote my own retentive dive planning doc and I’m sure other instructors have done similar, I just haven’t seen it

 

[RikDog7]

Here is my two sense based on the original question.
I was certified OW in 1994 with regular classroom instruction and pool/lake dives. I took some time off from diving and took an AOW e-course this summer to get myself back up to speed and see what has changed.
From my perspective the content seemed appropriate for the course being taken.
The old school, if you will, class had plenty of dialogue in the classroom and review at the dive site.
The new style class had more review at the dive site to discuss content of the e-material and then the dive specific content.
So, it seemed to me the content was comparable, just the delivery method changed.
The bonus of the e-learning is that I won't lose the book, and I was able to copy and paste information I needed to study more into my e-notebook for later reference anywhere in the world even if I left my textbook at home. Or I can log in to my agency website and look at it again.

So in short, to answer LakeHickoryScuba's question I don't think they are much different. As other people have pointed out the biggest variable is the learner themselves. That is where it comes down to the instructor to evaluate their student.
I'm glad to have been able to take an e-course from my house and only drive the 45 minutes to the dive shop as necessary.

 

[TMHeimer]

I think "mastery" has to do with the instructor, the shop, and the time allotted for the pool work. At our shop, instructors of course varied, and there were about 16 of them. But the theme seemed to me to be if someone knocked out a skill perfectly the first time there was no need to repeat it. If there was a struggle, repetition or help from the DM was in order. I THINK a majority of OW certified divers churned out were good enough to dive without a pro.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

My first course was LA County (we had to import Roy France from California to Salem, Oregon to get certified). That was in 1963. I started diving in 1959, and my "Manual" for learning Scuba was reading Jacques Cousteau's book, "The Silent World" about three times. For the LA County course, we used "The New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving." We were high school kids, members of the Salem Junior Aqua Club, affiliated with the Salem Aqu Club, which imported Mr. France for the combined class.

Now, I have a question. For our final pool exercise, Mr. France spread a very large gill net over each buddy pair, and we had to get out from under it, helping each other untangle the net from our Scuba and ourselves. My buddy was Elaine McGinnis, and it took the two of us well over five minutes to get untangled. As soon as I untangled her scuba unit, mine was tangled again. What would happen today if the instructor spread a gill net over a dive team and had them use their resources to get out from under it?

SeaRat