Build the Perfect Certification Agency

[Octopusprime]

I am a PADI diver and one thing I think all will agree on is that the advanced open water diver classification name needs to be changed... No diver after 9 dives is advanced. You can call it beginner deep, I don't care just not advanced...

i too too also agree there need to be some business support, sales training, mentoring, 20/20 group something.

 

[TMHeimer]

I've read through this thread a couple of times, and enjoyed the reflection it prompted me to do.


What are the roles of an agency? I think all of them develop a curriculum and standards, and issue certifications to divers and dive professionals. Most publish instructional materials to some extent. Some also do marketing, and develop business tools and provide business education to their members.

I'm familiar with several agencies, and each of them does some things very well, and others not so well or not at all. I have to say that I have been very impressed with an agency we often bash as providing very professionally created instructional materials in multiple media (even if they are aimed at the lowest common denominator), and also as providing a marketing behemoth and really good business education and business tools to their stores, even if some are unwilling to make use of them. These are the parts of agency function that most folks don't see or think about, but I think they are appropriate activities and should be done well.


The biggest failing I see in what we have lies in accountability and instructional quality. Published standards with some kind of attempt to describe what an acceptable performance is (as GUE has done) would help. Higher standards for entering instructor training and for passing it would help, too. And instructor requalification and reassessment (as GUE does) would help minimize standard creep, as boulderjohn has described on a number of occasions. Add those things to what we already have and it would be hard to criticize.

I agree with your points. Accountability and instructional quality is a tough one. Higher standards for instructor training would seem to make sense. But consider that no matter where you go, you find good and bad school teachers. I'm not sure how much raising teacher training standards or changing some of the courses would change that. Perhaps it would be more effective with scuba? I suppose I'm a pessimist.

 

[TSandM]

There are good and bad scuba instructors, and riding instructors, and schoolteachers . . . Teaching is an odd amalgam of personal ability, communication skills and empathy, mixed with a bunch of flexibility, a lot of patience, and a dollop of creativity. Some of those things you can teach, and some are innate. But it should be possible at least to ensure that all instructors have "instructor quality" personal skills, that they understand the curriculum they are going to be teaching, and that they also understand a well-defined set of criteria for adequate performance on the part of the student. I personally know instructors whose own diving skills are pretty woeful, and I always wonder how you can teach something you can't do very well at all. I also know from some personal experiences that the criteria for a satisfactory performance on the part of a student are pretty vague -- and in my own personal case, are sometimes just disregarded in the desire to make sure everyone passes the class.

 

[RJP]

I am a PADI diver and one thing I think all will agree on is that the advanced open water diver classification name needs to be changed...

You actually think that there's ANY topic about which "all will agree" here on ScubaBoard? Even if there was one... you think that THIS would be it?

Don't go there. Trust me.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You actually think that there's ANY topic about which "all will agree" here on ScubaBoard? Even if there was one... you think that THIS would be it?

Don't go there. Trust me.

Then on the other hand what kind of discussions would be interesting if everybody agreed?
Just look at all the boards where the participants are all on the same page and no arguing or differentiating points of view (some consider bashing) are allowed. Fewer and fewer people post, they get very boring, and everybody moves on.

Differences in opinion and healthy arguments are what keep scubaboard alive.

 

[RJP]

Then on the other hand what kind of discussions would be interesting if everybody agreed?

I just didn't want to see THIS particular thread going down THAT particular rabbit hole.

:d

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I just didn't want to see THIS particular thread going down THAT particular rabbit hole.

:d

Well, that's pretty hard to stop with all the loose cannons around here. Just go with it.

 

[scubadada]

I am a PADI diver and one thing I think all will agree on is that the advanced open water diver classification name needs to be changed... No diver after 9 dives is advanced. You can call it beginner deep, I don't care just not advanced...

i too too also agree there need to be some business support, sales training, mentoring, 20/20 group something.

Sorry, but this topic has been beaten to death. Everyone knows what AOW is and what it is used for. Other agencies are not significantly different. This is not going to change. For PADI you can finish Rescue with 9 training dives unless you want to count the rescue scenarios as dives, I didn't.

Now, take the LA County Underwater Unit Advanced Diver Program, that's an advanced diver.

 

[barilhu]

What I would really like is for instructor to talk to proprective diver about the first class will really give then. what class people should take after that and the kind of diving that is available (for warm water , cold, cave tech,......) What skill they will need to improve during there diving life. ......

 

[boulderjohn]

As I tried to indicate in my tongue-in-cheek response, some suggestions for an improved agency would be an improvement, if only they were practical. For an absurd hypothetical example to show what I mean, if one were to argue that all students who complete every course were then independently reviewed by another instructor, it would sound like a big improvement, but it would be both impractical and ineffective. It would double the cost of certification and double the number of instructors needed. It would soon turn into a needless rubber stamp of what was done earlier as the instructors developed an incestuous relationship through repeated interactions. Potential students seeing no benefit to a program that costs twice as much as other programs would flock to those other programs, and the agency would go out of business.

I agree that there should be higher standards for instructors than are found n most agencies, but there are practical limits. I was once a student in an agency that bragged about its instructor standards, and I had some thought of going that route myself. I watched what was going on and changed my mind. I saw that not only was the initial training very intense and very expensive, the followup was also expensive. If you wanted to teach another course other than the ones you were already certified to teach, you had to pack your bags, travel to a site, and spend days working on that new certification. In theory, you would be a better instructor for it, but in addition to paying a big wad of cash for the certification, you had to give up whatever vacation you had and spend thousands on travel, lodging, and food. Then you had to recertify through a similar process every few years. It did not take a whole lot of math for me to realize that as an instructor I would never earn more than a fraction of what it cost for me to become and remain an instructor. It did not seem like a good idea.

There is a high turnover of instructors in all agencies I know of. I know instructors who are not making minimum wage for the work they are doing, and they are barely doing enough instruction each year to pay for their insurance and agency membership. We had a thread in the Instructor to Instructor forum a few years ago that wondered about the extremely high instructor turnover rate at an agency that had such high instructor requirements, and the indication was that the poor ratio of the cost to be an instructor to the financial benefit to being an instructor was the reason.

In planning the ideal agency, it might be wise to include a bit of real world reality. Perhaps there is a good reason that what you propose is not already in existence.