Advanced Open Water Disappointment

[Eric Sedletzky]

Time to post this again to illustrate how worthless AOW is.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think people have an issue with this definition of mastery. I'm not one to get caught up in semantics, but I would rather see "competency" in place of "mastery." To me, mastery means having great knowledge and skill. I don't expect any OWD students to have that level of skill. They should, however, be competent, meaning having the necessary ability to perform a skill successfully.

When using a term like mastery, you have to look at the context. The way the word is used by PADI is consistent with the way the word is used in education circles. You can see it in the explanation of mastery learning by Benjamin bloom. The idea of mastery learning is that the student works until reaching a specific standard of performance and then is done. That contrasts with standard education, in which the student works for a specified period of time is measured and scored. The definition used by Patty is consistent with the definition you use in mastery learning.

In mastery learning, mastery at different levels of performance is based on what are called benchmarks. To use an analogy from baseball, if you were scoring a 12 year old for potential placement on a baseball team, you would give a very high score to skills that would be considered very substandard for a potential college baseball player, and a high score for that potential college player would be considered very substandard for a potential major league player.

I used to teach this in public education.

 

[scubaozy]

I think people have an issue with this definition of mastery. I'm not one to get caught up in semantics, but I would rather see "competency" in place of "mastery." To me, mastery means having great knowledge and skill. I don't expect any OWD students to have that level of skill. They should, however, be competent, meaning having the necessary ability to perform a skill successfully.

I am not native English speaker, so, not the right person to discuss semantics but the way I read that description is mastery term applied to a skill is filtered by certification level. If I am evaluating hovering skill for an owd candidate or an aowd, I will not apply same scale.

 

[Outbound]

I am not native English speaker, so, not the right person to discuss semantics but the way I read that description is mastery term applied to a skill is filtered by certification level. If I am evaluating hovering skill for an owd candidate or an aowd, I will not apply same scale.

You are correct in that this is the way training agencies use the term mastery. For them, it is relative to student level. That's okay. I would argue, however, that it perhaps would be better to use the term "competency." No one uses the term "mastery" the way that PADI does, as far as I know (or maybe other training agencies; I'm not familiar with them all). For example, in medical education the terms "competency" and "core competencies" are used. I'm not sure why PADI uses mastery. It seems like an odd word choice to me. I suppose it's not all that important in the end, so long as students demonstrate the skills to the level they need to. But I do worry that the word choices used in standards and especially in marketing materials has a peculiar and not always positive cumulative effect.

 

[The Chairman]

but the way I read that description is mastery term applied to a skill is filtered by certification level.

The problem is that this is not quantified so it allows a range of what's acceptable according to the instructor and not any standard. Agencies often hide behind the ambiguity, often throwing the instructor under the bus if it goes to court.

 

[boulderjohn]

No one uses the term "mastery" the way that PADI does, as far as I know (or maybe other training agencies; I'm not familiar with them all).

As I wrote above, the term as defined by PADI is common in educational theory.

The problem is that this is not quantified so it allows a range of what's acceptable according to the instructor and not any standard. So, agencies often hide behind the ambiguity, often throwing the instructor under the wall if it goes to court.

It would take a chapter in a book to explain it all. I will try here briefly. The system I am about to describe is used in all major performance evaluations, including essay grading on AP exams and many other such assessments. I have taught this, and I have supervised assessments done this way.

The people doing the scoring go through what is called a calibration process. They look at and score previously scored benchmark assessments until they have a firm idea of what it takes to achieve that level of performance. It takes surprisingly little time to do this accurately. Every time I went to an Advanced Placement workshop, we teachers were calibrated on a PC essay scoring. These are done on a 1-9 scale. We all could score with acceptable accuracy (one point) on that scale after only four or five sample scorings. On actual Advanced Placement exams, every performance is scored twice and the inter-rater reliability is over 90%. That means that the two independent scorers will get the same score 90% of the time.

In scuba, there is only a two point scale-pass or fail. The calibration process for scuba instruction is supposed to take place in the IDC. That is when the student practices scoring representative samples.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

The problem is that this is not quantified so it allows a range of what's acceptable according to the instructor and not any standard. So, agencies often hide behind the ambiguity, often throwing the instructor under the wall if it goes to court.

Calling of objective standards like a 3-foot window depth change allowed and within 15 degrees of trim without sculling would go a LOOOOONG way. I believe NASE and RAID are the only WRSTC members who mandate this.

The inherent side effect of this "massive change" would be the loss of the majority of instructors.

Okay, someone send me a recipe for crow, as now I admit that I am calling for a "massive change" that will cost "billions of dollars" (in revenue).

I'm still think the sooner the industry reaches that point, the better and healthier the industry will be.

 

[boulderjohn]

As I said, it used to be my job to teach this stuff to high school teachers. We who did this we're often amazed at the seeming inability of those teachers to understand what is really a simple concept. We finally realized that they could not understand it because they did not want to understand it. While we were explaining it, they were not listening. They were devoting their thoughts to what they would say to show that we were wrong. I suspect something similar happens in scuba, at least on ScubaBoard.

 

[boulderjohn]

Calling of objective standards like a 3-foot window depth change allowed and within 15 degrees of trim without sculling would go a LOOOOONG way. I believe NASE and RAID are the only WRSTC members who mandate this.

PADI uses that kind of language to describe performance in hovering for decompression stops in their tech program. It is not believed to be necessary at the benchmark level for an open water diver.

There are very few performance areas where that kind of objective language is possible. In fact, it is often counterproductive. In presentations, I used to give examples of very precise and objective language for assessment that sounded good but clearly led to completely erroneous scorings.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

As I said, it used to be my job to teach this stuff to high school teachers. We who did this we're often amazed at the seeming inability of those teachers to understand what is really a simple concept. We finally realized that they could not understand it because they did not want to understand it. While we were explaining it, they were not listening. They were devoting their thoughts to what they would say to show that we were wrong. I suspect something similar happens in scuba, at least on ScubaBoard.

Okay, here we are in agreement. If I recall correctly, both you and @The Chairman have been accused of lying regarding teaching entire open water courses neutrally buoyant and trimmed. I also have been accused of lying. And that is incredibly frustrating. I have asked people to just try. Nope, they've been doing it for decades, scored high in their IE, there is no room for improvement in teaching methods.

My only solution to this is when I open a dive center is to record an entire open water course from start to finish and upload it unedited online. That's a lot of video and students have to agree to it of course. Not everyone will want that, but I hope I will find someone willing to do so.

I'm sure I will be accused of using experienced divers in the video as "it isn't possible".

PADI uses that kind of language to describe performance in hovering for decompression stops in their tech program. It is not believed to be necessary at the benchmark level for an open water diver.

There are very few performance areas where that kind of objective language is possible. In fact, it is often counterproductive. In presentations, I used to give examples of very precise and objective language for assessment that sounded good but clearly led to completely erroneous scorings.

RAID does it.