Feedback about PADI on-line elearning diver certification

[oly5050user]

I now only teach using e-learning which the student must complete before the course begins. This gives me more time for concepts review and Q&A with the student, as well as more in-water time. It doesn't replace what I teach, it is a tool. And I can verify that the student has completed it. With textbooks, many times the students were reading along and completing their homework as I was trying to teach, so they had not gotten the basics for me to expand upon.

Yes I have had students just click through until they pass, but they are shocked when I print out every question they answered incorrectly and make them explain it to me and initial it.

And when I take a class, I like e-learning or at a minimum of PDF format books.

I had a married couple come in with both having completed elearning and the certificates that go with it..She answered all quick review questions ok and her husband got more than 1/2 wrong on the quick review.I sent him home , advising him to actually do the course and he needs to come back to retake a final exam-not a quick review, that was 2 months ago and have not seen them since.....I like elearning as it does save time in the course.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I can offer it if I choose to through SDI. I choose not to. I certify OW students through SEI which requires 16 hours of classroom. In that time I get to know my students well and can see in their eyes when they get it and when they do not. They also get more than they would through the e learning option I can offer.

 

[flots am]

Thank you for having me here in your forum. I am a writer, doing a story on PADI elearning. I wanted some objective feedback from those who have ever taken their Open Water Diver Certification course. I am reviewing the course, and how beneficial it is for someone first learning scuba, to start through an on-line course.

PADI eLearning might be better or worse than any particular class, depending on the instructor (and student). However the real purpose of the change is "to make more money for PADI"

It adds an additional cost to the student (the online class, which is paid to PADI), however what the instructor charges may or may not change. Theoretically, it should reduce the cost of training, but I don't believe there's any requirement that this actually happen.

It eliminates the printed textbook, which means that both the shop and PADI don't get to sell a book, so the shop loses a few bucks on the book and PADI loses a few bucks, but since PADI also gets $120 for the online class, they come out way ahead. For the student, it could be more or less expensive than a normal class, depending on how the shop/instructor charges.

I don't think there's actually any real academic difference between reading the book and answering the questions on paper or doing it online, so if you're asking "which is better?" I don't think you'll get a really good answer.

The only really big difference I can see is that it makes record-keeping for PADI much easier, so when someone goes off and does something stupid and gets hurt, and sues, it's easy to call up the questions and student answers and say "See, he knew not to do "x" and did it anyway."

 

[Jim Lapenta]

In the marketing info for the class it is suggested that shops and instructors not discount their classes. They can if they want to obviously (it's not like scubapro for goodness sakes where they'd get tossed from PADI if they did) but the student is supposed to be paying for the convenience of not having to get actual face to face instruction with a knowledgeable and experienced instructor.

 

[RJP]

I can offer it if I choose to through SDI. I choose not to. I certify OW students through SEI which requires 16 hours of classroom. In that time I get to know my students well and can see in their eyes when they get it and when they do not. They also get more than they would through the e learning option I can offer.

Which part of this relates to PADI e-learning?

 

[flots am]

I can offer it if I choose to through SDI. I choose not to. I certify OW students through SEI which requires 16 hours of classroom. In that time I get to know my students well and can see in their eyes when they get it and when they do not. They also get more than they would through the e learning option I can offer.

The SDI online training makes me crazy. Not sure if all their classes are like this, but for the instructor crossover and OW class, if you get an answer wrong, you have go through the entire chapter again. I'm not really fond of several of their questions/answers either.

OTOH, the instructor can spend as much class and pool time as he likes, and cover pretty much anything he finds useful, so I'm not sure why you would skip SDI either. The younger students seem to like (or at least accept) it.

flots.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Because SEI is my first agency and rescue skills, emergency deco procedures, and a few other items are required by standards. I didn't crossover to SDI to do OW. I did it to offer things that SEI does not yet offer or plan to offer like deep and wreck. And it was included in the deal with my TDI certs so why not?

 

[Andy Lazar]

I have taken the OW as well as the Nitrox online training offered by PADI and found the OW class to be fantastic. I thought it was very well written and I think I learned more than I would have sitting in a classroom with a group of people. I could breeze through the content that I understood and could go as slow as I needed to with the other topics. As far as the Nitrox class, it was a huge disappointment. I felt it was simply a money maker. I got very little out of the class. My biggest issue with the E-learning was that my dive center gave me absolutely no cost break for not having to teach me any of the material. I was charged the exact thing as they charge had I sat in their classroom even though they have a profit sharing agreement with PADI when a student list them while signing up for the e-learning.

 

[boulderjohn]

I was a classroom teacher for a number of years. Based on that experience, I'm not a big fan on elearning. I found that many students just could not assimilate and retain the information based on reading alone and needed the classroom situation to really figure things out. And that was just in academic classes where a failure to understand only earned you a lower grade, not the possibility of injury or even death.

Are you describing the PADI eLearning situation, or another that you have witnessed? There is an enormous difference in the quality of online learning situations, ranging from extremely poor to outstanding. A few years ago a study by the College Board showed that students who took AP classes online had a higher pass rate on the exam than those who took in a traditional class. There must have been something right there.

But let's talk about the PADI example in particular. The course is built using some very sophisticated software that is able to incorporate audio, videos, interactive learning sessions, check quizzes, etc. It is not an online book.

My first experience with it was in a shop that had not only been traditional in its approach before that, it was run by someone who was adamantly opposed to it on the basis of a truly horrible online course he had experienced (actually created) while he was teaching in college. When they finally allowed it, I was not involved in the first experiences, but all the instructors who were raved about how prepared the students were when they came into the classroom with them. And you do meet them in a classroom. You get to check their knowledge, add anything extra you want, and give them a test. When I finally started teaching those sessions myself, I would guess that I taught maybe 20 such students before a single student finally missed a single question on the test. They all really came to the classroom sessions fully prepared.

I think it is interesting that most of the negative comments above are not only from people who have no personal experience whatsoever with the PADI eLearning program, they are often from other competing agencies. Not only that, some have a very long and well established history of attacking everything that is related to PADI at every opportunity. I am guessing you are not getting much useful information for your research here.

 

[beendiving]

I was also not very comfortable with eLearning but I will say that every student that I taught that used it came in well prepared.