Before you take your open water course
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Wow, Up and down the same day due to critical feedback. I don't know you, and can't read what you have put together for a class project since you took it down. From what you and others have posted, however I can conclude that you put an extensive set of advice together for people to follow and be able to smoke any OW class. First, I think you probably received good feedback from your college class for the structure and overall content of the website. How many of those people are divers or dive masters or dive instructors? Non divers or people who are thinking about diving are generally easily impressed when I start talking about depth/pressure ratios; partial pressures of O2; and other general diving physics and physiology. The people who are on this board are generally at least divers, very often very experienced divers and many dive masters and instructors. They know what works and what doesn't. They know what it takes to pass an OW course and most instructors will know what it takes to become a proficient diver. Judging by the comments, you recommend people be able to swim 500 meters before taking an OW class. I will bet you that 95% of scuba divers cannot do that without some sort of assistance (wetsuit/mask/fins)and 99% of the general population.
As an example: Lots of divers who have never dove in a quarry will belittle quarry divers. My sister did when she found out that I learned to dive in a quarry. She learned to "dive for real-in salt water" in the Carribean. I learned to dive in 50* water and visibility where 20' was average and 50' was amazing. For deeper dives, you generally surface swam out about 200-250 yards, decend to 95' do your dive and if you are good enough on air consumption, you swim back underwater. On fun dives, my usual buddy and I would navigate underwater to the deeper sites and navigate back in underwater. My sister won't get in cold water period and won't dive in low viz conditions, either.
As an example: Lots of divers who have never dove in a quarry will belittle quarry divers. My sister did when she found out that I learned to dive in a quarry. She learned to "dive for real-in salt water" in the Carribean. I learned to dive in 50* water and visibility where 20' was average and 50' was amazing. For deeper dives, you generally surface swam out about 200-250 yards, decend to 95' do your dive and if you are good enough on air consumption, you swim back underwater. On fun dives, my usual buddy and I would navigate underwater to the deeper sites and navigate back in underwater. My sister won't get in cold water period and won't dive in low viz conditions, either.
Beefer
Guest
Any chance of the site coming back? I was looking forward to reading it! :depressed:
Mattleycrue76
Contributor
Wow when i think back to my OW class there were a couple of DMs that kept going on and on and on about DIR and cave diving and if you don't do this or that you're gonna die bla bla bla DIR bla bla bla cave diving bla bla bla. They really liked to hear themselves talk about what great divers they were. My Instructor on the other hand was relaxed and funny and made everyone feel at ease (even the ones who were having a really hard time). I guess when you've been diving for 20+ years/thousands odf dives like he has you don't feel the urge for people to recognize your awesomeness quite so much. I will try and stay with this instructor for as much of my con ed as possible. Please don't add to the number of "legend in their own mind insta-Divemasters"
I am going to look at a couple of the things you wrote here and make a great leap to a conclusion about the shop with which you are working that may be unwarranted. It really doesn't matter if I am wrong, though, because I am really talking about a big idea rather than making statements about any specific shop. If I am wrong about that shop, please look at this as if I am talking about a hypothetical situation instead.
Here are two comments you made:
In my career as first a DM, then an AI, then an OWSI, then a MSDT, I have never seen a single person do what you say you have seen 4 or 5 people do while you are just beginning your DM training. I have had people not complete the confined water portion of the class, but that came after a lot of extra training, counseling, and soul-searching. The closest I came to what you described was a 69 year old man who was so enfeebled by both age, medications, and previous operations that his doctor must have been out of his mind when he signed the medical release form. When we was struggling with even the most basic stuff (he did pass the swim test) and causing incredible delays for the rest of the class, I took him aside and suggested he take the class privately instead of with a group so he could get more attention. He wisely decided instead that it was all too much for him.
I once worked with two high-functioning autistic students who struggled. It took many sessions before one was actually OW certified. We only took the other to the Scuba Diver level, because we believed he would always need to dive with a professional.
In the general field of education, we are moving towards a concept called either standards-based or mastery learning. In traditional education, a student studies a concept for a certain amount of time, then the instructor passes judgment. Time is the constant, and learning is the variable. The instructor uses an approach called "my teaching style," and it is up to the student to adjust to it to become successful. In mastery learning, learning is the constant, and time is the variable. The instructor does not have a teaching style; rather, he or she uses whatever approach is best able to meet the student's learning needs--the instructor adapts to the needs of the student. If a student is not succeeding, the skilled instructor makes the appropriate intervention to help the student succeed.
Although mastery learning is only beginning to make inroads into general education (after several decades of reformers like me trying), it is supposed to have been the norm with a number of scuba agencies, including PADI, for quite some time. A scuba shop that embraces this vision does not pass students "just because they paid." The shop says instead, "Because you paid, we will use our instructional expertise to get you to meet the required standards, even if you are struggling to begin with." A shop like that does not have students routinely getting out of the pool and quitting during confined water classes.
Not long ago, I was assigned a private session with a young lady who had started with our shop but moved before she really go into it. She tried to finish with a shop in her new location, but after a miserable failure, she drive hours to finish up with us. She described the other shop's classes, and it included a collection of outmoded instructional methods and attitudes, included yanking off students' masks and shutting off their air without warning. Students who struggled with skills were "motivated" through belittlement. She did indeed walk out and not come back.
When I worked with her, she had significant problems in a couple of skills (especially mask clearing), but we got through them, and she did a gret job on her OW dives. I got a a very nice email from her a few months later in which she described the great time she had had on her first dive vacation.
Weak instructors take pride in the number of students who fail to meet their high standards. They blame their high failure rates on students not being properly prepared before they take the class or not working hard enough while they are in the class. They don't look to themselves as a part of the problem.
Excellent instructors take pride in the way they were able to meet the needs of challenging students and get them to meet the same high standards.
As you do your DM training, take an objective look at your shop and ask which of the above best describes them. If you want to be a great instuctor some day, that path will start with great Mentors showing you the way.
Here are two comments you made:
In my career as first a DM, then an AI, then an OWSI, then a MSDT, I have never seen a single person do what you say you have seen 4 or 5 people do while you are just beginning your DM training. I have had people not complete the confined water portion of the class, but that came after a lot of extra training, counseling, and soul-searching. The closest I came to what you described was a 69 year old man who was so enfeebled by both age, medications, and previous operations that his doctor must have been out of his mind when he signed the medical release form. When we was struggling with even the most basic stuff (he did pass the swim test) and causing incredible delays for the rest of the class, I took him aside and suggested he take the class privately instead of with a group so he could get more attention. He wisely decided instead that it was all too much for him.
I once worked with two high-functioning autistic students who struggled. It took many sessions before one was actually OW certified. We only took the other to the Scuba Diver level, because we believed he would always need to dive with a professional.
In the general field of education, we are moving towards a concept called either standards-based or mastery learning. In traditional education, a student studies a concept for a certain amount of time, then the instructor passes judgment. Time is the constant, and learning is the variable. The instructor uses an approach called "my teaching style," and it is up to the student to adjust to it to become successful. In mastery learning, learning is the constant, and time is the variable. The instructor does not have a teaching style; rather, he or she uses whatever approach is best able to meet the student's learning needs--the instructor adapts to the needs of the student. If a student is not succeeding, the skilled instructor makes the appropriate intervention to help the student succeed.
Although mastery learning is only beginning to make inroads into general education (after several decades of reformers like me trying), it is supposed to have been the norm with a number of scuba agencies, including PADI, for quite some time. A scuba shop that embraces this vision does not pass students "just because they paid." The shop says instead, "Because you paid, we will use our instructional expertise to get you to meet the required standards, even if you are struggling to begin with." A shop like that does not have students routinely getting out of the pool and quitting during confined water classes.
Not long ago, I was assigned a private session with a young lady who had started with our shop but moved before she really go into it. She tried to finish with a shop in her new location, but after a miserable failure, she drive hours to finish up with us. She described the other shop's classes, and it included a collection of outmoded instructional methods and attitudes, included yanking off students' masks and shutting off their air without warning. Students who struggled with skills were "motivated" through belittlement. She did indeed walk out and not come back.
When I worked with her, she had significant problems in a couple of skills (especially mask clearing), but we got through them, and she did a gret job on her OW dives. I got a a very nice email from her a few months later in which she described the great time she had had on her first dive vacation.
Weak instructors take pride in the number of students who fail to meet their high standards. They blame their high failure rates on students not being properly prepared before they take the class or not working hard enough while they are in the class. They don't look to themselves as a part of the problem.
Excellent instructors take pride in the way they were able to meet the needs of challenging students and get them to meet the same high standards.
As you do your DM training, take an objective look at your shop and ask which of the above best describes them. If you want to be a great instuctor some day, that path will start with great Mentors showing you the way.
Boulder john, I don't think that could have been put forth any better. That is the philosophy that our shop tries its best to follow, when it comes to the students, to enable them to succeed. Our shop will not pass a student, if they can not perform the skills set as standard by the agency we teach through. As I said to the OP when he confronted me with that statement, I did state that we have had a few quit, but it was because those individuals were basically pressured to take the course, not because they want to learn the sport. Most of these individuals are either afraid of the water or not at all comfortable in the water. We will work towards almost any end to help a student succeed, if they want it (a lot of time with no additional charge to the student). The lead instructor at our LDS closely watches the quality of divers that are certified through our shop. If he feels or sees evidence that an instructor may be certifying divers that may not quite be ready, he then takes that instructor aside, explain his concerns & then he & the instructor come together on how to correct the issue. He does follow up on it. To him the quality of divers that we, as instructors, certify through the shop is a direct reflection of him. Being a new instructor, I have been very closely looking at the different methods the other instructors use in their courses & taking notes on what seems to work & what doesn't. Very soon (after I complete my internship), I will have to find what works best for my students, it will take some time & some trial & error to smooth out. Of course (please correct me if I am wrong on this), every instructor has their own teaching style which probably works most of the time for most people, but they must be prepared to immediately alter that style to meet the needs of the students they are teaching, if there are issues the students are having, being able to absorb the materials & skills they presented with. This is, of course without compromising the standards set forth by the training agency.
That's the way I see it.
I was a DM for a while, assisting a variety of instructors and carefully watching how they deal with issues. Every tip I picked up was another tool in the toolbox I would later use in my instruction. Our shop later decided that it would not use DM's--you had to be at least an AI to assist in a course. I continued in that role, again absorbing more and more ideas from the experienced instructors with whom I worked.
Our shop now has many instructors and few AI's. This means that when we work with larger sized classes (anything more than 4), we have often have two full instructors working with the students. We usually take turns teaching skills, and we share ideas on the flow of the course and how to make things more efficient. I learn a lot from my fellow instructors, and they learn from me.
In the Instructor to Instructor forum, we frequently have people raise questions that lead to ideas and suggestions from around the world. I read these carefully, and I have picked up good ideas there, too.
You can never stop learning.
Coldwater_Canuck
Contributor
I don't see any real need for a pre-scuba course in the first place. The course moves at a pretty slow pace in my opinion and starts at the very basics. Reading the book, getting in reasonable physical shape (and I use the word 'reasonable' loosely, plenty of people in pretty poor shape have no issue diving, and I include myself in that group), and being a decent swimmer is really all you need.
This page was made for a course, so that's fine. But to introduce it here and suggest it be made a sticky, I can kind of understand why people are shooting it down. Your qualifications being a newly certified diver and having no instructional experience is an issue. But also, introducing things such as you need to be able to swim 500m, is there any proof of this or is it just an arbitrary number you came up with? I don't know how PADI comes up with the length of the swim or the time to tread water, but I assume they have scientific and proof backed reasons for making this a requirement.
I'm sure for a school project it was great, but don't jump on experienced instructor's who don't feel it's a good idea for new students to use this training tool. In something like diving, improper "training" can do more harm than good.
This page was made for a course, so that's fine. But to introduce it here and suggest it be made a sticky, I can kind of understand why people are shooting it down. Your qualifications being a newly certified diver and having no instructional experience is an issue. But also, introducing things such as you need to be able to swim 500m, is there any proof of this or is it just an arbitrary number you came up with? I don't know how PADI comes up with the length of the swim or the time to tread water, but I assume they have scientific and proof backed reasons for making this a requirement.
I'm sure for a school project it was great, but don't jump on experienced instructor's who don't feel it's a good idea for new students to use this training tool. In something like diving, improper "training" can do more harm than good.
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