Cave Training and Etiquette Real or Imaginary?

[mdax]

Those "rules" sure are great if you want to bring a minor into peacock, abandon students or put in jumps on your knees.

 

[LiteHedded]

Do you think it would be enough, if every cave diving training agency required a Fundamentals level class as a prerequisite? I know several agencies have an "Intro to Tech"; UTD has its Overhead Protocols class. If everyone came to cave training already with solid buoyancy, solid trim, the ability to hold still and a tolerance for task loading, would instructors be faced as much with the conflict of needing someone's money but not liking their diving?

they sort of do already. they require a cavern class, they teach it poorly, and it doesn't help.

we have a member of the board of directors (president according to this: » Board of Directors National Association for Cave Diving) starting this thread and he says:

Do I fault these divers? NO, I lay fault with the agencies and the instructors. The agencies for permitting a corp of instructors who themselves are not often up to par of the once perceived cave diver status, yet have passed a streamlined learning process using a curriculum quite often based solely on academics and not practical application and /or refinement.

he's then asking the instructors (here on scubaboard!!) to try to do better. if that doesn't tell you how little power they have to improve their organization and how hopeless it is, i dunno what does.
how hard would it be to observe some classes and start pulling instructor credentials? these piss-poor classes are being taught EVERY DAY at ginnie and peacock. by people on their boards of directors and BIG names in the sport

it's absolutely absurd and a race to the bottom.

 

[boulderjohn]

This is definitely a problem.

The reality is instructors that do their jobs right rarely fail students, but their student may not pass the course until they are ready and demonstrate they have met the necessary skills, attitude, and ability. It's a subtle difference, but important one.

Going to a model of "pay by the day" may help solve some of this problem.

Here is a little of my career specialty--instructional theory.

In every course in every subject, prerequisite skills must be identified. For example, a student who just completed algebra I should not be taking calculus. The curriculum should be carefully mapped out so that a motivated and non-handicapped student who has the prerequisite skills will pass in the allotted time. A motivated and diligent student failing a class should be a rarity. If a class has a high failure rate, then the cause is some combination of incorrectly identified prerequisite skills, a poorly designed learning sequence, poor instructional materials, an unrealistic time frame for completion (you can't learn calculus in a week), and poor instructional methodology.

In regard to my last post, the one leading to this one, I would like to focus on prerequisite skills. If you look at many a cave instructor's web site, you might see AOW as the only listed prerequisite. In my mind, a typical new AOW graduate, who may have a whopping 9 total lifetime dives, is not a good candidate for cavern course. I sure wasn't when I got my AOW. If a student goes into cavern diving unable to get into horizontal trim or hover, if that student has never done anything but a flutter kick, then the class will not go well. If nothing else, there should be a realistic listing of the skills a student should have before committing to such a class. If the instructor is worried that making such a requirement will limit the ability to get students, the solution is simple: offer your own pre-cavern OW skills class. You can do that through pretty much any agency.

 

[The Chairman]

Those "rules" sure are great if you want to bring a minor into peacock, abandon students or put in jumps on your knees.

Wow, did you actually witness this? If you did and did not report it then you are the problem. If you're publishing third party accounts then you are also the problem. I really don't get the thirst for needless drama and it's not just you that I am writing this for. Aspersions and insults are being cast with little regard for their veracity. They include those obscure references that might do wonders for your ego, but accomplish absolutely nothing in regards to actual change. It would appear that the only motivation is to injure others while hiding behind the relative anonymity of a pseudonym. What few of us can understand is what underlies that motivation. Professional jealousy? Personal disagreement? Guess what? We simply don't care why you act like a fidiot. Stop it. Get over yourselves. Stop the prurient grand standing. Stop assigning motives or drawing conclusions like a kid in grade school. It's like a scene from Madagascar...

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Getting back to the OP, it's my opinion that a lack of personal responsibility is what's wrong with many aspects of instruction today, and not just cave and scuba. We do the dive community a great service by talking about how to do it right. We do it a grave disservice when we devolve what could be a great thread into chest thumping and as a venue to keep banging our pet peeve. Personal responsibility is important on a forum too. Stop silting out the thread with sheer pettiness. It's unbecoming.

 

[victorzamora]

Going to a model of "pay by the day" may help solve some of this problem.

I'm actually a HUGE fan of this. Are you thinking something like "$200/day, average 4 days, minimum 3"? I mean, this would still have issues, as the McDs instructors (quality, not agency) would stretch out classes unnecessarily long to squeeze more money out of students, or they'd turn in shorter days, or they'd still have low standards.

There's a line of study called Root Cause Corrective Action Analysis. It's a manner of analyzing the full situation and determining exactly where I actually wrote the procedures and forms for my company's version of this. Obviously I haven't done the full excercise, and I'm sinning by jumping ahead of myself, but my guess is that the full shebang would end up with "Poor QA/QC" being the correctible root cause and/or prevention point. The real root cause, imho, is the laziness of people. I'm guilty of it myself. I go to Taco Bell 3+ times per week for lunch. It's $2.69 after tax, it's consistent, it's easy. I don't cook a full meal from scratch daily for lunch. I get it. I skip cooking myself a full meal because I can. You'll never fix me being too lazy to WANT to do it.....but if you want to get me eating higher quality food you either make high quality food easier OR you make low quality food harder. Same with this. It's currently too easy to be a poor quality instructor. You won't fix them being lazy, or lazy students wanting it. What you CAN fix is how easy it is to find crappy instructors. You do this by enforcing tight standards and being more ready to eject bad ones....in my opinion. Really, it's for people much more experienced and involved than me to ponder.

 

[The Chairman]

my guess is that the full shebang would end up with "Poor QA/QC" being the correctible root cause and/or prevention point.

When I worked at Fifth Gear Automotive, the owner, Elliot, told me there were really no bad mechanics: only bad managers. He would go on to point out that they would always function to the level that was required of them. Require less and they will happily oblige. I have found that to be oh so true over the years, although I did find a couple of horrible mechanics that I just couldn't work with.

 

[kr2y5]

There are a lot of things that go into being a good instructor. (...) it is also important to consider the ability of the person you go to to TEACH. One of my cave classes was more of a 5 day evaluation than any kind of learning experience, and it was disheartening.

Would it be useful to disentangle training from evaluation? If you paid person X ("trainer") to train/mentor you, and person Y ("evaluator") to evaluate your skills (and issue a C-card if you meet standards), it could be easier to avoid a conflict of interest, and everyone would benefit. Trainers would be motivated to make sure their students always pass, or else they would not have students, so they would likely not cut corners. Evaluators would be motivated to uphold high standards, or else they would lose credibility, especially given that while fewer people have a true talent to teach, apparently most people can very easily spot any major deficiencies in training. For the most advanced classes, maybe one should even require more than one evaluator to sign off before a C-card is issued. It seems that a little bit of transparency as to what a student is actually paying for (training or C-card) would go a long way...

 

[karstdvr]

. In fact, I'm pretty damn proud of the impact social media has had on Scuba training in general and ScubaBoard has been a huge part of that..

How? This thread has a certain amount of futility in that, "a problem is recognized, and no one can fix it". This discussion ongoing has been heard here, TDS, and CDF,and one would hope if social media would have an impact, this discussion would resolve.

 

[kr2y5]

"a problem is recognized, and no one can fix it".

Readily available solutions exist in other domains... for example, people in academia regularly evaluate each other's universities in official surveys, which leads to official school ranking that, in turn, most prospective students rely on as their #1 selection criteria. No matter the amount of politics in diving, it likely fades in comparison with the politics in academia, and yet it all somehow works...

 

[LiteHedded]

How? This thread has a certain amount of futility in that, "a problem is recognized, and no one can fix it". This discussion ongoing has been heard here, TDS, and CDF,and one would hope if social media would have an impact, this discussion would resolve.

agreed. this is nothing new.
raise your hand if you weren't aware of poor training before this thread