Dispelling scubaboard myths (Part 1: It is the instructor not the agency)

[The Chairman]

Whose term is 'staged'?

I always took it to mean "planned" as contrasted with "accidental". You have the gas, the gear and an actual dive plan to justify what you're taking. One staged deco makes you a tech diver. 100s of accidental or casual deco dives usually does not. It's a mentality to me. I've done both, but most of mine (oh the horrors) are probably in the casual category.

I've been diving since 1969. While my initial class was dreadfully lacking, it did not result in any certification. It was a Master Cheif taking the time to teach a friend's kid how to dive. However, I got to see a few classes back then, and they were successful in keeping me from wanting to get certified. Since I got my fills on the Navy Base, it wasn't necessary. Anecdotal? Sure. As someone who was already diving, the classes appeared to be more of a macho challenge than actually learning how to dive. There are lots of ways to make training harder in most any venue and most of those methods are counterproductive. Harder, especially when it chases people away, does not mean more effective or better. My entire life has been devoted to working smarter: not harder. When I finally got certified at the turn of the century, my certification class was also lacking. The instructor was a dufus and while he had passed his ITC, his laziness, stupidity and inability to adapt detracted from his ability to actually teach. He constantly commented that I had obviously "done this before". Thankfully I had and had also read the book so I knew what an SPG and BCD are and how to use them.

Every instructor is a sum of their past experiences. It's reflected in their teaching style. I've been associated with the Boy Scouts most of my life, even to training Adult leaders how to train boys. Baden Powell referred to Scouting as a "Game with a purpose" and surprise: that's how I run my Scuba Classes. It's not a class: it's a game. With a purpose. To me, keeping it fun (no idle time) is the most important part of my class. The exercises are broken down into games rather than tasks and the rules of diving become the "rules" of our game. I value both my students' and my time, so there is precious little idle time. I don't think it's good for students to be idle, when they can be swimming instead. The "purpose" of these games? That would be to produce a diver with way above average control (trim, buoyancy & propulsion) who will not put themselves into an unsafe situation (they know their limits). Make no doubt about it, my students work their butts off and people looking outside in might think they are training for a Scuba marathon. I have had other instructors come up and ask about my games in the pool. They're fun and attract people. I like being innovative and I believe that shows. I can say with little worry of overstating things that I teach a truly unique and fun class, in a modicum of time with stellar results.

 

[Wookie]

I always took it to mean "planned" as contrasted with "accidental". You have the gas, the gear and an actual dive plan to justify what you're taking. One staged deco makes you a tech diver. 100s of accidental or casual deco dives usually does not. It's a mentality to me. I've done both, but most of mine (oh the horrors) are probably in the casual category.

Yes, and here is where I ran into the issue and had to go for help. The term "staged deco" is used to describe deco in stages, usually a 10 foot stop interval rather than sliding deco, in which the diver is always ascending, albeit slowly.

Which I had (in my head) mixed up with the terms for deco bottles and stage bottles, where deco bottles are carried throughout the dive, but often in cave diving, are staged at critical points through the cave for egress gas.

Once I clarified the terms in my head by consulting my dive buddy, who is also a cave diver as well as instructor Google, the question was rendered moot.

 

[stuartv]

What I mean by "staged decompression" is doing deco with stops. As opposed to the deco you are doing during a constant ascent at the end of a "No Deco Limit" aka "No Stop" dive. Whether the staged decompression includes gas switches or all deco is done on back gas doesn't matter to me. Even if all deco is done on back gas, if there are planned, required stops on the way up, I would call it a staged deco dive. At least, that is what I learned the term to mean, during my tech training.

I do agree that doing "recreational" dives and ending up with mandatory deco stops that were not planned out in advance does not make someone a tech diver.

 

[TMHeimer]

My experience is our shop always gave out the survey forms with no advice on how to fill them out. Have no idea what the questions were.

 

[Ayisha]

My last PADI course was well over a decade ago. But - to be fair - I have never been surveyed by any other agency either. I do not know anyone personally that has.

GUE is one agency, at least, that requires a quality assurance survey to be completed and submitted before issuing a certification. Before you can even see in a logged in student section what an instructor has officially entered as the result of your course, you have to submit your ratings of the course and instructor, then you can see the official result and they mail the c-card.

 

[The Chairman]

Wow... a forced survey. That's not going to skew results.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

This does relate to the OP somewhat. The last 15 years of my working life depended on assessment surveys. Depending on the course that could mean the "survey" related to anything from 2 hours of instruction/assessment to 40 plus hours.

Those surveys were required in that if the number of students and assessments didn't match pretty closely questions were asked in case someone was hiding something.

IMHO those things weren't worth the paper they wasted. If you had a cranky or know it all student that just wanted to complain there was nothing you could do that would be good enough. If you were polite and helpful most would just tick the it was wonderful boxes unless they got confused and ticked all on the wrong side. That happened often with ESL participants.

Truth is most students had no idea if you ran a great course and covered the necessary points. In general all they wanted was to pass... if they passed they were happy. That just put pressure on people to accept questionable skills for fear of getting a bad review that activated the please explain or you are suspended sequence.

I actually got very few complaints. The majority of the complaints I did get were because I insisted on meeting the standards. Initially students claimed I picked on them because I asked them to come in early or work through lunch on problem areas. After I started telling them I would be willing to spend some of my lunch or unpaid time before class to help them get up to speed those complaints were rare. I could often convince the participant that I was giving them a great opportunity to have a bit of extra practice before they came back to be tested.

Those assessments papers were too easily impacted by the instructor's skill at influencing the class. We had some major renovation being done downstairs from one of our training branches. This meant JACKHAMMERS, periods with no water, plastic sheets that didn't keep all the dust from drifting upstairs. The smells of paint, hammering and clanging well you get the idea... a full on construction site. Think about teaching with a jackhammer operating below you! We were leasing the building and had no control over this and it went on for several months. The Manager came to me and asked "How come none of your students really complain about the construction? All the other Instructors are getting heaps of complaints. Some of them are attaching additional pages to write their complaints. What are you doing and we want you to talk to the other instructors about it." It was all about attitude and I had decided it would be fun to see if I could get the participants to NOT COMPLAIN while the other instructors encouraged their students to complain. My attitude of acceptance and getting the students to join me in a game of "beat the noise" did the trick. I got students to suggest new rules for the "construction game".

The only way we were able to really get a handle on how the instructors were doing was by having a few of us actually go and sit in on classes as observers. 99% of the students had no idea if the instructor was meeting standards or knew the standards well enough to know what they should be taught.

So my long winded post means. IMHO it IS the Instructor NOT the Agency but that fact makes little difference in a reality where most of the OW students have no idea if the INSTRUCTOR is complying to their agency's standards!

 

[TMHeimer]

Again Point No.2??.....Has point #1 been discussed to death already?

 

[boulderjohn]

My experience is our shop always gave out the survey forms with no advice on how to fill them out. Have no idea what the questions were.

The PADI surveys are sent out by PADI, not the shops. Many shops also survey their customers, but that is different.

 

[Colliam7]

So, when you say survey "most" students post class - what does that mean and what are other people's experiences of it? Perhaps this will help us dispel the "myth" or make it the truth.

In PADI's case, at least in the Americas (probably similar in other regions, I cannot speak to those areas, however), the goal is to send a QA survey to every new OW certified diver, as I understand it. The surveys are sent by email, hence PADI's current requirement that an email address be included with every certification submission. That is a practical, albeit obviously imperfect, approach. 1) Some students (say they) have no email address. In that case shops will often enter a shop email address and attempt to give the survey to the student directly; 2) Sometimes the student's email provider / platform applies spam filters that send the emailed survey immediately to electronic purgatory, and /or it ends up in a folder that the student never checks. My GMAIL set-up has a 'Primary', a 'Social' and a 'Promotions' folder. PADI emails go to my 'Primary' folder, but they could easily go tp 'Promotions' if I hadn't taken action years ago; 3) Some students seldom check their email - hard to believe for someone who lives on (business) email, but that is the case; 4) Some students have multiple email accounts and intentionally don't regularly check one or more of them (which may be the address that they gave to PADI); and 5) Some students receive the QA Survey email, and ignore it. I seem to recall hearing a PADI 'official' say that their capture rate is between 20 and 25% of surveys issued, which they consider to be good compared to general response rates, but which is obviously far less than 100%.

I did my OW and AOW years ago and honestly do not recall if I received a survey, by email or snail mail. I seem to recall completing some kind of written assessment of my AOW class. When I completed my Tec Deep certification in 2008 (2 students in the course), I did receive a survey (I do not know if the other student did or not). It was very thorough (I thought), asked very specific questions (which I now know related directly to specific standards, and I spent a considerable amount of time responding.

In recent years, I have had various students tell me they received a survey, after a) an OW course, b) an AOW course, and c) a specialty course. I always encourage my students to respond to surveys if they receive one. I also make a special point of emphasizing situations where my approach to meeting standards might not be immediately apparent - for example, I show students that I have a folding snorkel in the pocket of my wetsuit, when I do not have one attached to my mask. I point out that I have two signaling devices (a whistle and a mirror), also in a pocket of my wetsuit. I regularly refer to standards in teaching, so that students understand why I do certain things the way I do. And, I usually say, when I point out these things, that I want the students to know what I am doing, in case they receive a PADI QA survey.

A comment on the titular theme of this thread: The world is not a perfect place. Scuba training agencies (PADI included) are not perfect entities. I am not a perfect instructor. Agency standards create a framework (a construct) within which agency instructors can deliver a consistent product from the perspective of content (if they adhere to standards), that meets the goals of the particular course, and promotes the safety of students (and instructors). Individual instructors can make a significant contribution to the overall 'value', indeed the 'quality', of the learning experience, based on their personality, delivery, educational skills, technical expertise, adherence to the standards of their agency, etc. So, a categorical statement, 'Its the instructor, not the agency', is probably not entirely accurate, any more than 'Its the agency, not the instructor' fully describes the outcome of scuba training. It is worth noting that, in the majority of reported cases that I am aware of where divers have been injured or died during training, the instructor violated / failed to adhere to standards in some way. Yes, there have been medical events during training that led to diver injury or death. But, those appear to be the exceptions. So, I think that agency standards are important. And, I also think that standards across the majority of scuba training agencies with which I am familiar are more similar (not identical, but similar) than dissimilar, notwithstanding some (well-intended) chest-thumping at times on behalf of one or another agency.

I spent 26 years as a tenured member of the facility of a major state university, in a health professional school with a national reputation for research excellence. I had a colleague, in another division, who was a friend, and someone I admired greatly as a person and as a scientist. He was world-famous for his work, had exceptional extramural funding, supervised multiple post-doctoral students, etc. And, he was an absolutely terrible classroom teacher. He had no discernible teaching skills in that environment, was a poor lecturer in terms of organization and delivery, and not just because English was not his primary language, although that contributed to his 'performance'. I actually think it is safe to say (unfortunately) that he met 'standards' for university teaching - his syllabus ostensibly included the material intended to be delivered in the courses he taught, he nominally covered the material in the classroom, and he assessed students with written examinations. But, it was readily apparent, to other faculty and very painfully to students, that he should not be in the classroom. I have seen some scuba instructors fully adhere to their agency's standards, and deliver a very poor product. I have seen other instructors adhere to the very same standards and deliver an inspirational product, that leaves students excited and wanting more. I have also seen some very 'personable' instructors fail to adhere to (aka violate) their agency's standards, because they were lazy in some cases, or simply thought they 'knew better' in others, and certify students who were lacking in some expected skills. Standards make a difference. So do instructors. And, those are not myths.