Build the Perfect Certification Agency

[Diver0001]

1. Agency for certifications. All other activities support this single goal.

2. Focus on instructors, not dive shops.

3. Make use of expertise amongst membership, not use outside consultants to produce weak materials or courses.

4. Promote true excellence in the instructor cadre, applying high standards.

5. Recognize and promote the need for string foundational skills and beginning with the end in mind philosophy for diver development.

6. Accept that teaching specialist diving activities require extensive specialist instructor experience.

7. Promote business model that ensures healthy income to members through minimum pricing and discourage loss leader and cost-competition mentality.

8. Raise quality and standards to reduce market saturation in supply.

9. Pro-active QA that measures training outcome and safety. Not reliant on unilateral customer feedback, but inspection by agency.

10. Rewards excellence in training, not volume of sales.

11. Trusts in the expertise of its instructors, doesn't promote or restrict training through strict lowest common denominator standards to pander to the weakest instructor elements.

12. Encourages instructor development through low-cost pro level education and sharing of expertise amongst membership.

13. Teach / qualify instructors in specialist activities from subject matter experts, not generic instructor-trainers.

14. Syllabus should develop overall diving skill progressively in levels. Prerequisite training should provide definable skill foundations for next level.

15. All courses should start with a pass/fail assessment of defined prerequisite skills. Formal remedial training should be required, as a standard, if student cannot display defined prerequisite skill set.

Sounds like a summary of what we already have, in principle. You may disagree with the extent to which these elements are accentuated but with the exception of the one I highlighted above (see bold--my addition) I think most agencies cover these bases. Is there room for improvement? Yes. There are also competing priorities of volume (revenue) versus quality but without a certain amount of volume instructors like you would be eating dead crabs from the beach and cursing them for not doing more to get people into the sport. There is a balancing act at work here.

R..

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I still think instruction and certification need to be separate entities.
I've seen way too much favoritism and people who should not have been passed due to corrupt private instructors.
Two cases come to mind. First, I dove with a guy who recieved private courses from his brother in law and I had to ultimately rescue him on a dive we went on when he got in way over his head. It became obvious he had zero skills to dive safely. I was glad I was there so he didn't kill himself or somebody else, but was also pissed because it was me that got stuck with this guy and it wasn't fair. But I will accept blame because I didn't see the signs and dove with him anyway.
The other is a guy who was a competitive freedivers back in the 70's. He wanted to go to a freediving competition but they required that all participants were scuba certified, so he had a NAUI instructor friend of his basically write a bogus cert for him after one "trust me" tank dive. He later bent himself bad doing a 200' dive in FL hunting groupers in wrecks on a single AL 80 and ran out of air at 60 feet as he was coming up. So he did a CESA and survived but his shoulder started to crackle and inflate under the skin a few minutes after he got back on the boat. He's had five shoulder surgeries since then and a bunch of other problems.
So now he's decided to teach his son to dive "His way" and tells me to shut up when I mention it would be better for him to get "real" training at a dive shop.
The first guy I don't know what happened to and frankly don't care.
I have also helped with classes where in IMO the instructor passed a few people that I thought shouldn't have passed. But, they were going on vacation and their kids passed fine so he wanted to keep them a happy family.

If there was a separate test only certification agency that didn't let this kind of BS happen everybody would be better off.

I can think of a few parallels.
Smog shops in CA. Some are test only so there purposely is no mechanic on duty that can monkey with adjustments to get a car to pass.
DMV, they don't teach you how to drive, that is up to you, they only test you so you can get your license.
Can you imagine if driving instructors were also allowed to give you your drivers license? Oh man! what a nightmare that would be.
ASE certifications for mechanics. If the shop was allowed to give them out everybody would be certified and it would mean nothing. Instead it's a pretty intensive test at an independant facility that's non affiliated with any private shop.
There are many others including welding certifications for iron workers, and many others too numerous to mention.

I think this "It's the instructor not the agency" stuff is a bunch of crap. It's both of them, they both stink.
The instructor for being a corrupt lazy ass, and the agency that doesn't patrol their affiliated instructors, only when there's a complaint. By then it's too late, somebody got passed that shouldn't have.
I read here all the time about people raving when somebody complains about a crappy instructor "Turn him in! turn him in! I beg you!".
That instructor never should have had the power to give ANYBODY a card to start with.
So how do you patrol it? simple, like I said, separate the two.
All the training standards for now are moot, worry about that later when the bad instructors are washed out.

 

[DevonDiver]

16) Non-professional dive leadership training.

17) Entry level divers trained to TRUE competency to plan and conduct dives independent of supervision.

18) Courses end with a practical assessment of end product. Not an instructor driven training dive.

19) Agency promotes, maintains and QA's safety and quality standards for non-training (fun diving) activities run commercially by instructors, DMs and shops.

20) Agency focus on 'big picture' training outcome, not mastery of isolated skills. Reflected in assessments for qualification and robust QA process.

 

[mlevsky]

Gue circa 2010 for me. Maybe even a few years before that.

What do you think has changed in that time?

 

[Germie]

The independend from diveshops idea I like. But I want a way for autodidacts too. A sort of exam so the natural autodidact diver can let proof his skills and knowledge, like it is in other sports.
Further the possiblility for a student to choose an instructor he likes. If the student want to learn diving in a holiday, that must be possible. If he wants to do it in 3 months with only 1 day a week, that must be possible too. So it must be possible to choose the way of learning you want, in a few days, or in months, with total learningtime with instructor same of course. I know this is now possible too, but then within 1 organisation and no talking behind your back if you have choosen way X or Y.

 

[scubadada]

The independend from diveshops idea I like. But I want a way for autodidacts too. A sort of exam so the natural autodidact diver can let proof his skills and knowledge, like it is in other sports.
Further the possiblility for a student to choose an instructor he likes. If the student want to learn diving in a holiday, that must be possible. If he wants to do it in 3 months with only 1 day a week, that must be possible too. So it must be possible to choose the way of learning you want, in a few days, or in months, with total learningtime with instructor same of course. I know this is now possible too, but then within 1 organisation and no talking behind your back if you have choosen way X or Y.

I'm not sure how it would work if a diver was entirely self-taught. How would you get the initial certification, air fills, etc? After that, demonstration of skills, proof of experience might work to some degree but what about verifiable proof as needed for certain dives or activities? Would there have to be some kind of official recognition agency and/or standards? What would people think about liability, a popular topic on SB these days?

---------- Post added January 7th, 2015 at 07:20 AM ----------

17) Entry level divers trained to TRUE competency to plan and conduct dives independent of supervision.

The most valuable thing I got from my 1970 basic scuba diver training with the LACUU. I do not believe I would have had these skills following my PADI OW recertification I did in 1997

 

[ajduplessis]

Members within agencies cant even internally agree on issues.

 

[Diver0001]

The most valuable thing I got from my 1970 basic scuba diver training with the LACUU. I do not believe I would have had these skills following my PADI OW recertification I did in 1997

This is not an issue of standards, it's an issue of course delivery. Nothing in the standards forces an instuctor to under-train their students.

R..

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

The independend from diveshops idea I like. But I want a way for autodidacts too. A sort of exam so the natural autodidact diver can let proof his skills and knowledge, like it is in other sports.
Further the possiblility for a student to choose an instructor he likes. If the student want to learn diving in a holiday, that must be possible. If he wants to do it in 3 months with only 1 day a week, that must be possible too. So it must be possible to choose the way of learning you want, in a few days, or in months, with total learningtime with instructor same of course. I know this is now possible too, but then within 1 organisation and no talking behind your back if you have choosen way X or Y.

With the separate certification agency and final exam the student would be able to get the knowledge any way they wanted in any time frame they wanted. They would have to show up for the examination fully armed with the necessary knowledge and skills or else they wouldn't pass, but it wouldn't matter how they got those skills whether on their own or through a private instructor.
For vacationers who want to try scuba, the regular 3 day course they offer now would work for that operator and only that operator. If the course was complete enough they could always go in and take the test at the cert agency and if they pass they get their full card, but the hotel/operator that gave them the quicky resort course woudn't be able to certify them to dive around the world.

I think it would work. It's the only way I can think of to reset the integrity of training.
A lot of people have great ideas on what training should be and that's a separate issue. My issue is, all those great ideas - how do you enforce them without some sort of checks and balance system?
Back when scuba started it was very small and the few instructors that were around were entrusted to hold up a certain standard, and most did because it was an honor thing. Now it's a money thing, and when that happens a lot of stuff changes to leverage as much profit as possible, and not always in favor of what's right.

---------- Post added January 7th, 2015 at 09:40 AM ----------

This is not an issue of standards, it's an issue of course delivery. Nothing in the standards forces an instuctor to under-train their students.

R..

Nothing in the standards keeps an instructor from under training students either.
Right now there's nothing stopping a crooked instructor from doing anything, all that comes out after the fact.
And with the current system of the fox guarding the hen house that will never change.

 

[TSandM]

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.