DIR/GUE OW class

[fins]

While I think the GUE Open Water course is a great idea and would cover the topics and skills that every diver should have (basic OW skills, bouyancy control, trim control, proper kicks, team awareness, rescue skills, dive planning, and the optional drysuit training) a couple questions come to mind regarding the success of this proposed class:

1. Will beginning divers really sign up for this type of class, and with the limited number of GUE instructors how available will this class really be?

2. Will a GUE OW certification be widely accepted?

 

[waynne fowler]

I think that this is a great model. I hope that GUE can make it fly. If they can they will certainly be doing those people that make it a great service.

I don't think that the course is trying to do too much this is very much the way that course used to be set up in years gone by. Doing the skill in the hovering position will be new but not the amount of knowledge disseminated. Keep in mind how the DIR-F and TECH 1 & 2 are set up. You don't just show up for an 2 - 3 hours in a day.. The class' take all day.. I am sure we will see that this course follows the all day format also. If that is the case they will most likely find that there is not a great demand for this course.

While GUE has great instructors, they do not have very many. If you think about how difficult and expensive as it is to just become a Fundamentals instructor, I think we will find that to be able to teach this course will take a ridicules investment in both time and money from the would be instructors.

Then you'll have the whole cost issue. It will have to be an expensive class. If you have eight 6 hour lectures, with eight 6 hour confined water dives, followed by eight O/W dives that cannot take, w/debrief, less than 6 hours each I would think. That is a total investment of 144 hours of time by both instructor and student. I don't believe you'll see too many of these course's going on. So for the general public I don't feel it will be too widely accepted, if it's even widely available. Though GUE has never desired to turn out a lot of students just good divers. They may find that they have set themselves a hard row to hoe with this.

I wish them good luck with this, I hope that it could change the status-quo for the industry but I expect that it will do nothing more than create more fruitless debate.

Waynne Fowler


Edit... Just read some of the rest of this thread.

Thanks Bob. I figured it would not just be the typical 2 - 3 hour sessions.

I've read a couple places where people are saying they are tired of the students who get certified "automatically"?... I'm curious as an instructor.. are there any of you out there who will issue a certification to someone who has not met the standards?. I personally have refused certification to people not only for not being able to perform skills to the minimum of standards but also just because they did not have the correct mindset. I have had complaints lodged against me with my training agency for not issuing cert's because I felt the person had an unsafe attitude. The agency has stood behind my assessment. This is not only my moral obligation to the student but I am bound by S & P's to do no less. While I agree that the standards may be too low non-the-less I am bound by them. If however I feel that the student is lacking the proper skills I am also bound to with hold certification until such time as they are adequately skilled. We tell people right up front "we do not sell certifications,, we sell training. It is possible you may need more than someone else" if that is the case we will make additional training available to you at a very reasonable cost. I think the vast majority of instructors do not feel compelled to give a certification just because someone has paid them.

 

[waynne fowler]

Let's start a contest. No prizes. We'll guess at what the cost will be.

I'll start. I would guess around $900.00

Anyone else?

I bid $1050.00 Bob... er wait your not Mr. Barker... where'd Bob go!...Bob..Bob!!!

 

[Vie]

This was posted recently on Quest List:

From : David Chamberlin <dwc@nautiboy.com>
Sent : Sunday, November 27, 2005 11:31 PM
Subject : Re: Preview of GUE OW program

But seriously, the topic of class cost did come up in the workshop. While the class cost will ultimately be up to the instructor, the consensus seemed to be that $1200 US was reasonable given:
- Very low instructor:student ratio
- Length of class
- Breadth of material
- Quality of education

Clearly GUE is not attempting to compete in the $199 OW category, nor do they want to. The focus is on the type of person that values top-quality education.

-Dave

 

[The Kraken]

Gosh!!! The last century wasn't THAT long ago, was it??? :11:

the K

 

[Scuba_Steve]

$1200 US. WoW.

Good thing they're not going after the masses (so it has been said) cause they're not going to get them.

I can't imagine anyone who hasn't already got a good idea of what's going on would even think about this. It's just not going to happen no matter how well you'd be trained afterwards.

 

[Tollie]

Like many on this board I was looking forward with anticipation to the roll out of GUE&#8217;s ow course. I&#8217;m disappointed in what I saw as the general direction GUE chose for the course.

GUE has a substantial amount to offer the recreational diving community and the course as described will fail to make the kind of impact that it should. I believe that this is likelybecause GUE has not emphasized what truly makes GUE education great.

GUE has chosen to jam into one course what other agencies spread out over several courses. The number of dives a PADI student will typically make on their way from O/W to Rescue while picking up Nitrox and Dry suit will be substantially greater than the number of dives that the GUE O/W student will make during the course of his or her training. GUE has emphasized in the past the need for practice dives between periods of training and they seemed to have ignored this sound practice in the creation of the o/w class. One of the difficulties in Fundamentals and imo Tech 1 is that so much material and such a high level of skill is required to achieve an out right pass that few make it on the first go around. For O/W smaller bite sized chunks with solid mastery at each step is a better way to go.

Now I believe that GUE training is suburb. It has changed my diving life and it has changed the way I teach diving. The real genius of the GUE approach is the in water instruction, the use of video, the tighter ratios, the use of lines for control rather than students kneeling and the excellent drills (ascent & decent) that build control and confidence.

I&#8217;m sure that much of this will be included in the GUE o/w class but I know that it is quite possible to produce O/W divers within PADI standards who have very high quality trim and buoyancy skills and who can perform the basic scuba skills without losing trim and buoyancy and who have at least a good level of team awareness. I know it is possible to teach basic skills to students as actual divers perform them and not while on bended knee. I know this because in my own teaching I use DIR equipment and have made use of many of the teaching approaches I learned as a GUE student. I know there are other instructors on this board who also teach basic o/w with a DIR orientation within standards for their agencies.

What I was hoping would be an O/W class that was accessible for the mass of recreational students completed within 4-6 O/W dives, home study of the basic academics supplemented with no more than three hours of class lecture and confined water session of about 5 hours. In short a class that could be completed in time frame competitive with industry standards.

At $1,200 per student probably not including gear rental or boat charges&#8230; I just can&#8217;t imagine the typical couple or family plunking down that kind of money. How many of us on this board would have gotten into diving at all if you were told it would cost this much and take as long to complete training as the GUE class appears to take?

 

[Vie]

Has anyone seen the GUE OW "manual" ? Is there one?

 

[detroit diver]

Yikes! I thought I was high on my guess...

Okay, new contest. Let's guess on how many students (collectively) they'll have in one year's time.

My guess is 20.

This was posted recently on Quest List:

From : David Chamberlin <dwc@nautiboy.com>
Sent : Sunday, November 27, 2005 11:31 PM
Subject : Re: Preview of GUE OW program

But seriously, the topic of class cost did come up in the workshop. While the class cost will ultimately be up to the instructor, the consensus seemed to be that $1200 US was reasonable given:
- Very low instructor:student ratio
- Length of class
- Breadth of material
- Quality of education

Clearly GUE is not attempting to compete in the $199 OW category, nor do they want to. The focus is on the type of person that values top-quality education.

-Dave

 

[The Kraken]

One area of concern would be recognition of the certification by other agencies worldwide.


the K