Build the Perfect Certification Agency

[Basking Ridge Diver]

What would you do for existing agency divers that want to take a new course - how do you cross reference existing skills and existing agency certifications to this new Agency / Course structure?
Just to add to the fun...

 

[decompression]

What would you do for existing agency divers that want to take a new course - how do you cross reference existing skills and existing agency certifications to this new Agency / Course structure?
Just to add to the fun...

Instructor assessment, have them attend fundimentals/essentials if they require a "tune up".


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[Basking Ridge Diver]

Instructor assessment, have them attend fundimentals/essentials if they require a "tune up".

For a fee?

 

[boulderjohn]

Having been reading SB threads for more than a decade and having read thousands of comments about what agencies should be like, I think I have a pretty fair idea of what a number of ScubaBoard regulars believe. Perhaps they don't have the ability to put it together into one whole vision. Perhaps they have never seen a full description of what they believe, so I will try to do it for them now.

The Open Water Course will combine what most agencies have for OW, AOW, and Rescue. It will include other information as well. It will fully prepare students to dive safely in almost all environments. It will take about 100 total hours to teach and will usually be covered over several months of training. There will be at least double the typical pool time of today's classes, and at least 7 OW dives will be required. Students will flock to these classes because of the superior level of training provided.

Instructor Pay will be very different from what it is now. Typical instructors today do not even earn minimal wage. Instructors for this agency will earn wages truly commensurate with their professional status.

Quality Assurance for instructors will be proactive. It will use roughly the same processes used so successfully by the American education system to ensure that we have nothing but high quality teachers in every classroom. Highly skilled instructor evaluators will talk to students who graduate in in-depth interviews to be sure their classes were done right. Those instructor evaluators will sit in on academic sessions and observe both pool and open water sessions conducted my our many, many thousands of instructors all around the world to make sure that they are doing everything as required.

The cost of open water instruction will be many times the cost of current classes because of the need to provide high pay for the instructors teaching those 100 hour courses and because of the need to compensate thousands of full time instructor evaluators working around the world. Students will gladly pay that extra cost because they know they are getting a better education than is offered by agencies today.

Training materials for the open water course will not be online and will not use fancy interactive learning materials. Because it is insulting to highly educated students to read materials that can be understood by the younger children taking the courses, the reading level of the materials will be targeted to the college level reader. It doesn't matter if anyone can read the materials anyway, since the primary mode of instruction will the scintillating lectures of the instructor.

Specialty classes for advanced skills not included in the open water course will not be offered. They are just a money grab. If divers wish to learn specialized skills, they will contract with instructors individually to do so. In that case, the instructors will not be following a prescribed and approved curriculum and they will not have any prepared materials from the agency, so they will not be called instructors. They will instead be called mentors, and they will not accept compensation for teaching those skills. Accepting payment for such work is just another money grab by a greedy scuba industry.

The central leadership of the agency will be comprised of highly educated and skilled professionals, the kind you would expect to see leading successful corporations. These people will be dedicated to the future of scuba and will either volunteer their time or work at minimum wage. If possible, the agency headquarters will be located in an abandoned monastery so that housing costs can be minimized by using old monastic cells. Any money beyond that going to the central administration is a money grab.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Starting at the first "pro" level be it DM, AI, etc. Candidates are selected and not solicited. From that point on they can at any time fail the course if they do not meet the requirements. Due to this they only pay for their books. If they must pay tuition then the certifying shop/instructor gives them a paid contract following completion of the class. Confident that they will be worth it.

Once they reach instructor con-ed is required. Ideally con-ed from an instructor, or even agency, they have not previously trained under whenever possible.

For the new student:
1. They receive a copy of the standards they must be taught to.
2. They sign a learning agreement.
3. Must be fully capable upon exiting the class of doing what the RSTC now requires without hesitation or anxiety. If not, no card.
4. Must be able to assist a fellow diver or buddy in the event of an accident.
5. Must know basic CPR/First Aid
6. Minimum classroom and pool hours. I like 12 - 16 of each.
7. On line learning is OK but DOES NOT reduce class time. Used for convenience and to communicate some of the more mundane aspects like diving history. This is from someone who would willingly spend hours on it if allowed to. If on line learning is used instructor conducts in depth exam of student to insure they know and understand the material and are not just parroting back what is in the book. Just because the lights are on doesn't mean anyone is home.
8. Instructors free to and encouraged to add materials and information/skills to course to suit local conditions and test on those as a requirement for certification.


Higher level students must prove proficiency in previous skills and knowledge attained before being permitted to enter class.
Clearly defined entry requirements to include:
1. all basic skills neutral and in trim, smoothly with changes in buoyancy of less than 2 feet plus or minus. gets tighter as they get higher ratings
2. review of previous academic knowledge. Could be oral but show they understand basic gas laws, safe diving protocols, calculating NDL's, gas management, basic rescue procedures, etc. as required by class they wish to attend.

Agency structure
Member owned
Democratic elections of officers for paid positions
No outside non diving investors own any part of it
Materials produced professionally and with minimal marketing/advertising for the next class. Example see the Graver manual.

 

[decompression]

For a fee?

I don't get out of bed for less than........[emoji2]


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[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Great thread! I was actually thinking about the same thing. I like the way UTD and PSAI structure their courses. If I was to do it my way it would look something like this:

Entry Level Certification: APPRENTICE DIVER (This combines PADI OPEN WATER + PEAK PERFORMANCE BUOYANCY into one course).

At this level you undergo the same training as Open Water but you don't get your graduation "license" after four checkout dives. In my experience, 4 dives are no enough to teach you to plan and execute your own dives. After your OW course with 4 checkout dives your certification should allow you to do 20 more dives under the supervision of a divemaster or instructor.

SCUBA DIVER

This level should come after the student has done his 20 dives under different instructors or DMs. In order to get this certification the student should be able to demonstrate:

Peak performance buoyancy
Proper Buddy skills as well as air sharing drills

If the above are completed to the satisfaction of the instructor only then the student should earn their basic open water certification. This I think is needed for various reasons because there are a number of threads where newly certified open water students do not have the confidence to dive on their own. I applaud their maturity to realize and acknowledge that there is a serious gap in their training and doing 20 dives under supervision over a stretched period of time should correct that. This is also intended to provide some well earned income to the DiveMasters. They are at the bottom of the scuba industry food chain and their expertise should be utilized to fill a very obvious training gap. In other words the first 20 dives should cost more because they are still learning dives and divemasters fee should go into their costs.


DEEP DIVER (combines Deep Diver + Navigation + nitrox)

I am a total disbeliever in PADI AOW. There is no way you can honestly teach someone deep diving in one training dive and follow it with 4 "specialties" giving a single dive to each. This "Jack of all trades" is a dangerous method of training divers IMHO. I was totally untrained to deep diving after my AOW course and had to learn a lot of things on my own after the AOW. The Deep Diver program should combine 5 deep dives that should look something like this

Dive 1: Narcosis Dive
Dive 2: Narcosis Management Dive (Taken from PSAI Deep Air training but applied to recreational depths of 130 and less).
Dive 3: Nitrox Dive
Dive 4: Compass Navigation Dive on Nitrox
Dive 5: Natural Navigation Dive on nitrox

These dives all done below 60 feet should graduate a student who has learnt something substantial rather than specialties like "boat diver" or "shore diver."

SPECIALTIES: The rest of the training should be in the form of indepth specialties. Some useful specialties are as follows:

Solo / Self Reliant Diver
Twin Tanks
Full face mask
Drysuit
DPV
Search and Recovery
Night / Limited Vis
Side Mount
Wreck Suveys (Here I am talking about detailed archeological surveys with precise wreck map making etc).

Besides these there is also a market for indepth video courses.

Video 1: Teaches how to shoot good quality underwater video using entry level gopro
Video 2: Teaches Advanced techniques such as using light filters video lights as well as Video editing
Video 3: Should teach how to shoot interviews, sound bites and turn your videos into marketable documentaries. It should also give the student and understanding of television industry, documentary market etc.

By the time a student has done all the video components, they should be able to shoot their own underwater documentaries and be able to submit them to festivals.

So that is my vision of a training agency. I am not going to get into tech as I have yet to experience that. I have just prepared this from what I felt was lacking in the way rec training has been organized and presented to me.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Having been reading SB threads for more than a decade and having read thousands of comments about what agencies should be like, I think I have a pretty fair idea of what a number of ScubaBoard regulars believe. Perhaps they don't have the ability to put it together into one whole vision. Perhaps they have never seen a full description of what they believe, so I will try to do it for them now.

The Open Water Course will combine what most agencies have for OW, AOW, and Rescue. It will include other information as well. It will fully prepare students to dive safely in almost all environments. It will take about 100 total hours to teach and will usually be covered over several months of training. There will be at least double the typical pool time of today's classes, and at least 7 OW dives will be required. Students will flock to these classes because of the superior level of training provided.

Instructor Pay will be very different from what it is now. Typical instructors today do not even earn minimal wage. Instructors for this agency will earn wages truly commensurate with their professional status.

Quality Assurance for instructors will be proactive. It will use roughly the same processes used so successfully by the American education system to ensure that we have nothing but high quality teachers in every classroom. Highly skilled instructor evaluators will talk to students who graduate in in-depth interviews to be sure their classes were done right. Those instructor evaluators will sit in on academic sessions and observe both pool and open water sessions conducted my our many, many thousands of instructors all around the world to make sure that they are doing everything as required.

The cost of open water instruction will be many times the cost of current classes because of the need to provide high pay for the instructors teaching those 100 hour courses and because of the need to compensate thousands of full time instructor evaluators working around the world. Students will gladly pay that extra cost because they know they are getting a better education than is offered by agencies today.

Training materials for the open water course will not be online and will not use fancy interactive learning materials. Because it is insulting to highly educated students to read materials that can be understood by the younger children taking the courses, the reading level of the materials will be targeted to the college level reader. It doesn't matter if anyone can read the materials anyway, since the primary mode of instruction will the scintillating lectures of the instructor.

Specialty classes for advanced skills not included in the open water course will not be offered. They are just a money grab. If divers wish to learn specialized skills, they will contract with instructors individually to do so. In that case, the instructors will not be following a prescribed and approved curriculum and they will not have any prepared materials from the agency, so they will not be called instructors. They will instead be called mentors, and they will not accept compensation for teaching those skills. Accepting payment for such work is just another money grab by a greedy scuba industry.

The central leadership of the agency will be comprised of highly educated and skilled professionals, the kind you would expect to see leading successful corporations. These people will be dedicated to the future of scuba and will either volunteer their time or work at minimum wage. If possible, the agency headquarters will be located in an abandoned monastery so that housing costs can be minimized by using old monastic cells. Any money beyond that going to the central administration is a money grab.

Or we could just go back to days when you bought a regulator and there was a set of instructions enclosed reading "Don't hold your breath while using this device".



The course you outlined above would cost I'm guessing around 5K?
Where do I sign up.

 

[kr2y5]

The perfect certification agency will be selling just that, certification. People will acquire training from individual instructors, who have no incentive to cut corners and give away meaningless pieces of plastic, and they will come to certification agencies to obtain a certification that their skills are up to a certain standard.

 

[Bob DBF]

Having been reading SB threads for more than a decade and having read thousands of comments about what agencies should be like, I think I have a pretty fair idea of what a number of ScubaBoard regulars believe. Perhaps they don't have the ability to put it together into one whole vision. Perhaps they have never seen a full description of what they believe, so I will try to do it for them now.

The Open Water Course will combine what most agencies have for OW, AOW, and Rescue. It will include other information as well. It will fully prepare students to dive safely in almost all environments. It will take about 100 total hours to teach and will usually be covered over several months of training. There will be at least double the typical pool time of today's classes, and at least 7 OW dives will be required. Students will flock to these classes because of the superior level of training provided.

Instructor Pay will be very different from what it is now. Typical instructors today do not even earn minimal wage. Instructors for this agency will earn wages truly commensurate with their professional status.

Quality Assurance for instructors will be proactive. It will use roughly the same processes used so successfully by the American education system to ensure that we have nothing but high quality teachers in every classroom. Highly skilled instructor evaluators will talk to students who graduate in in-depth interviews to be sure their classes were done right. Those instructor evaluators will sit in on academic sessions and observe both pool and open water sessions conducted my our many, many thousands of instructors all around the world to make sure that they are doing everything as required.

The cost of open water instruction will be many times the cost of current classes because of the need to provide high pay for the instructors teaching those 100 hour courses and because of the need to compensate thousands of full time instructor evaluators working around the world. Students will gladly pay that extra cost because they know they are getting a better education than is offered by agencies today.

Training materials for the open water course will not be online and will not use fancy interactive learning materials. Because it is insulting to highly educated students to read materials that can be understood by the younger children taking the courses, the reading level of the materials will be targeted to the college level reader. It doesn't matter if anyone can read the materials anyway, since the primary mode of instruction will the scintillating lectures of the instructor.

Specialty classes for advanced skills not included in the open water course will not be offered. They are just a money grab. If divers wish to learn specialized skills, they will contract with instructors individually to do so. In that case, the instructors will not be following a prescribed and approved curriculum and they will not have any prepared materials from the agency, so they will not be called instructors. They will instead be called mentors, and they will not accept compensation for teaching those skills. Accepting payment for such work is just another money grab by a greedy scuba industry.

The central leadership of the agency will be comprised of highly educated and skilled professionals, the kind you would expect to see leading successful corporations. These people will be dedicated to the future of scuba and will either volunteer their time or work at minimum wage. If possible, the agency headquarters will be located in an abandoned monastery so that housing costs can be minimized by using old monastic cells. Any money beyond that going to the central administration is a money grab.

My personal opinion is that using the government school system model of education is that learning diving will be much more expensive and much less effective. At least, in that system, everyone will get a [-]trophy[/-] certification regardless of their ability.

Actually, it will immediately go out of business because it is not government funded and required.


Bob