Concerned with my Instructors Methods/OW certification class

[sealsix14]

I do feel like they did a great job instructing and leading us on our Cert dives and I personally found my instructor very helpful and nice after my initial concerns...so your right when you say that I didn't know what to expect because I've never been. Personally as a student it seemed crowded but I understand it has to be that way due to the type of class I took part in. It was great and I'm not saying they did a bad job, they were great... it was just what it seemed like from my view. I don't have any regrets about my instructors or training.

 

[krawlings]

THAT IS GREAT THAT YOU CAME OUT OF THE CLASSES WITH A POSITIVE VIEW .KNOW COMES THE HARD PART TAKE WHAT YOU JUST LEARNED AND GO DIVING . Just remember that you will be learning thing each time you dive . You will never know it all, new thing always come around. I always treat each dive as a practice dive, because I am always working on some skill or new equipment or new sight. Even when I dive a sight that I have done MANY TIMES I always come across some thing I have never seen or had happen . It is great . I hope you know the addiction of this sport will never let you go LOL
CONGRATULATIONS AND HOPE THE BEST FOR YOU IN DIVING . May be we will see each other at Lanier or Lake Jocassee Sc (some really good diving there)

 

[JerseyMike]

This sounds ridiculous! As an instructor I never heard of such a thing. One thing is practicing your buoyancy a bit down at the bottom of the pool and another is just wasting time. Time to switch instructors.

Hello everyone,

I am currently taking an OW certification class through my University and I find it fun and am so excited to continue my diving education way beyond basic OW but I have some concerns that maybe some of you veterans can help me out with. Currently I am taking and SSI OW class and my instructor is very nice but is quite laid back, but i'm not sure if this is a good thing, just to let you guys know this is how a normal class goes, and to let you know we are in the pool at 13 feet for average of 40 minutes a week.

Class begins with set up of equipment, the first week we learned how to use the equipment, then we proceed through our pre-dive checks and buddy checks for safety which is all good and very important. Once we are cleared and are sure we are ready to enter the water, we enter and then proceed to go down to 13 feet. But this is where the problems come with this class. For the past two weeks (two classes, one each friday) we have done nothing but sit at the bottom...and this concerns me. I know that I need great buoyancy control, proper weighting, and breathing yet we have not practiced anything or even been taught this stuff yet ( I have completed all the book work though). I'm sure he might bring it up eventually but when we enter the water the assistant instructors which are just students are down there just watching us.

I would think we should be doing drills and practicing neutral buoyancy yet I feel like I am personally not getting the proper training. We are going down to Ginnie Springs florida for our OW certification dives on April 26-28 and when I go I wish to be fully prepared for anything and would like to know that I can handle whatever happens, and not just rely on the Instructor being there for "safety".

I could be jumping the gun and he could bring this up sooner or later; but i feel my time spent in the pool each week should be spent wisely and not on wasting it just sitting at the bottom of the pool. If you guys have any suggestions of something I should tell the Instructor or should be doing on my own in the pool to make better use of our pool time I would appreciate the guidance.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Racediver]

Hey guys. I know this thread is quite old, but it´s the only thread and extensive description of the class that pops up if you search for "Georgia Southern Scuba". I have taken the class at GSU in 2014 and I think it was a great class. I might have not taken it if I´d have read this thread before.

So excuse me for bringing up this old thread. I just want to add a different opinion about the class and I don´t want this thread to scare any potential new divers away from taking the Georgia Southern class.



The class is basically still the same as back when this thread was opened. It's still operated by the same dive shop and, even though the OP didn't mention the instructors name, it sounds like it's the same instructor. It´s a semester long class meeting once a week with the checkout dives at Ginnie Springs, FL.

Pretty much every week was spent in the pool. Class size was definitely under 20 students. I can't say for sure how many we were, but it felt like around 12-14 max. As soon as we arrived we could set up our gear and later in the semester I doubt we ever got into the pool later than 15-20 minutes after the class started. Which left is with well over an hour of pool time. In the pool it was one dive instructor, some (as far as I know) trained assistants and some student assistants. So even though we only had one instructor we had a lot of additional eyes on us and those assistants did a great job noticing if something was wrong and demonstrating skills. Pool sessions never felt boring even though we spent tons of time down there.

All the pool time was spent in the same buddy teams. Over the course of the semester we repeated OW skills over and over. Mask clearing, regulator retrieval, getting neutral buoyant, etc... we did those standard skills basically every single class which lead to it feeling like a routine, you were not thinking about how to do stuff anymore. I doubt you achieve that feeling in a few days "crash course".

I have to say most skills were done on the bottom of the pool, not while being neutral buoyant. In the beginning everybody was wearing quite some weight (It seemed like he wanted to be sure nobody has trouble staying down) before we adjusted weighting after to classes or so. Weighting is definitely the topic he should have spend some more time on though, most of my knowledge on weighting came from reading about it after finishing the class.
Before the checkout weekend he made sure everybody was proficient in every skill we practiced over the semester. I liked the way he was and felt pretty comfortable during class at all times.


The checkout weekend itself was with two more instructors, the assistants and the other class (so we were a bit over 30 in total I´d say) and I ended up being grouped with an instructor I never met before. This was actually a good thing in my opinion. He had some slightly different routines and told us some other things. Ginnie was beautiful and so much fun. We did not go into the eye with a lot of people (maybe they learned form the past?). We went in there with our buddy and our instructor, so three in total, to do air sharing ascents. It was stressed all the time that we have to stay out of overhead environment.

In total we dove both the ear and the eye, drift dove the Santa Fe river and dove in the Ginnie Spring itself. After being certified the first people that signed up for the trip were allowed to go onto a night dive. Some people preferred to drop that dive so we ended up only being two small groups of maybe 6 people.



All in all I enjoyed the class a lot and felt comfortable at all times. I went diving with two different PADI instructors afterwards and both stated that my skills and routines were very good for just having completed my OW - note that the diving was in completely different conditions (salt water, open sea, ice cold, waves...), on a different continent and with completely different gear! I definitely felt way more comfortable than I would have thought. I´d recommend that class to every GSU student interested in Scuba.

 

[The Chairman]

Thanks for the added perspective!

 

[GrandpaScuba]

Speak to your instructor. He/she will not know how you feel if you don't communicate. The instructor might have a very specific way in going through the course. You will not know until you ask.

SCUBA taught at the college level has an interesting dylemma. You actually have too much time to fill.

The SSI OW course is designed to be taught as six classroom sessions and six pool sessions. With one open water snorkel dive and 3 open water Scuba dives. SSI believes in repetition. Once you have been taught a skill such as mask clearing, you should expect to do that skill in all following pool sessions. That is the SSI way. "Comfort through repetition."

 

[Colliam7]

The 'resurrection' of this thread may be useful for other student divers about to begin training, or certified divers pursuing additional training beyond initial certification. There have been a number of threads on SB, including several sticky notes, regarding selection of the 'best' instructor. And, I am always intrigued by the variety of perspectives. I am also very much of the opinion that the student's perspective(s) substantively influence the outcome of any learning process.

This has been brought home to me over the past several months through participation in a non-scuba activity, somewhat simultaneously by coincidence, with a friend / acquaintance. The two of us have participated in a personal development process, begun at slightly different times (he several months before me), involving the same pair of professionals - essentially what might be deemed 'instructor' equivalents. We have had virtually the same types of exposures to the course material, and the same periodic interactions with the professionals. But, we have come away with very different reactions to the program and the professionals. At first, my friend was positive about the two professionals and, before I started the course, was quite enthusiastic about them. Over time, he has essentially moved to the opposite end of the satisfaction spectrum, and now complains that they do not listen to him, that they don't give credence to his comments / concerns, and he regularly voices suspicions that they are somehow trying to 'cover up' their inadequacies or hide something from him. On the other hand, I have had what I consider to be a consistently positive experience with them and the program, I believe that they are competent, caring, and communicate rather well.

From my perspective, the two professionals are the same, the difference is in the mindset of the 'students'. I don't say this to suggest that my friend is wrong, and I am right. it i possible that we could find our 'roles' reversed with a different course, or set of professionals. Rather, the bottom line for me is that there are often subjective factors that influence process and outcome in any learning / development process, including but not limited to scuba. And students / divers can have very different experiences with the same program / people. I am usually hesitant to criticize another instructor from afar, based only on the description provided by one individual student. That doesn't mean the individual is wrong, only that not every student is 'right' for every instructor, nor every instructor 'right' for every student. The revelation doesn't rise to the level of rocket science or amazingly unique insight on my part. But, it is a useful reminder for me as an instructor, and a learner.

 

[Bob DBF]

SCUBA taught at the college level has an interesting dylemma. You actually have too much time to fill.

The SSI OW course is designed to be taught as six classroom sessions and six pool sessions. With one open water snorkel dive and 3 open water Scuba dives. SSI believes in repetition. Once you have been taught a skill such as mask clearing, you should expect to do that skill in all following pool sessions. That is the SSI way. "Comfort through repetition."

The problem is not too much time to fill, but whether the instructor is motivated to fill the time constructively. Just because an OW class is longer should not mean that you limit the training to that of the shorter instruction time frame. Thalassamania made a couple of posts ( 35 & 40) earlier about that from the perspective of one who had run university diving programs.




Bob
---------------------------------------------

That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.