Cave Training and Etiquette Real or Imaginary?

[The Chairman]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

At the request of the OP, the NACD resignation controversy thread has been split to here: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ca...tion-contorversey-split-etiquette-thread.html

I've also been asked to remind you to stay on topic: Cave etiquette and Training. Thank you!

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[GDI]

Actually, by your reasoning you can potentially do more harm than good. Even though well-intentioned. Samples don't necessarily need to be large (depends on the distribution of the population) but they have to be random. This is one of the cases where common sense reasoning -- pieces of information gathered may not help but cannot hurt -- can be wrong. What karstdvr points out should be taken to heart.

If you are really interested in learning about the opinion of NACD members (by "really" I don't question your sincerity but whether you're prepared to put hard resources behind it), then something like the following might help: among the current membership, randomly generate x samples/members. Then provide a questionnaire (must be brief) to fill out, anonymized. Provide an incentive: free 6-month (or a year) membership. You will still only get a partial response but the information contained will be meaningful. As opposed to the repeated kibitzing by the same folks on this board. I'm a NACD member and the freebie won't entice me to spend a few minutes to send in a questionnaire (I doubt for many cave divers membership fee is a significant financial factor) but the perceived seriousness of the effort might.

This thread is so long that I have to recheck what it was about, but I do applaud the overall effort.

Exactly

 

[GDI]

The issues of The NACD Instructor Violations thread may be interesting reading for many. This threads intent is still very much of interest to the agencies wanting to know more of what needs to be done to improve cave diver training. I was quite glad to discuss some of the points mentioned within this thread today with some fellow cave instructors.

Anyway we are all still interested in following up on many of the items listed here. One thing that came up was the mentoring procedures used during instructor development and why agencies such as the NACD and NSS-CDS have four levels of cave instructors while others have as few as two.

Ok Fair question I think. The NACD felt it necessary to better develop the cave diver introducing aspects of cave deco and minor navigation. This also allowed for the student who still needed more development to practice before achieving full cave status. The Apprentice level is a temporary cert of 1 year duration (unless the diver continues directly onward to full cave under the watchful eye of a cave instructor). we considered this a s the stage of fine tuning. The student cave diver progressively moved towards more complex navigation and penetration.