How different are tec courses agency to agency

[tomfcrist]

The biggest problem with critiques is that the person filling it out could very well be an idiot. You could teach 20 pool hours and have a student respond that you only did 2 pool hours. If 1 is very satisfied and 5 is unsatisfied, there are people that will mark 5 when they are very satisfied just because 5 is a bigger number than 1.. You cannot assume that people have common sense, reading comprehension skills or even a fully functional brain.

I understand that this comes across as a little exaggerated....its not. I have my military (non diving/real job) students fill out instructor critiques after every course I teach. It has quality of life questions, course evaluation questions etc.... I ask my students every single day if they are having any issues with the barracks, the galley, the laundry machines etc. I also tell them prior to their critique that if they haven't told me about an issue, they shouldn't be putting it on the critique(I haven't had a chance to fix it). Without fail, some idiot will add a comment about how bad the galley sucks, or that it is too cold in their barracks room...whatever. And I have to explain this **** to my CO. Yes we have some dumb ass people in the military, but if there is one thing I have learned while I have been in the Navy, it is that the Military is perfect reflection of the civilian population....so there must be just as many dumb ass civilians(or more).

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Agreed. RSTC is no guarantee of anything. It's a paper tiger. Or housecat really. It does not set standards. It issues guidelines that are ignored by its own members. RSTC membership in marketing courses works because people are ignorant of what it actually is. When you educate divers by showing them standards for several agencies and allow them to compare them with what is issued by the RSTC, and compare those with actual divers they see out in the world, they see the lack of quality guarantee that was implied. I have cards from a number of agencies. I've had people tell me their ymca cards were turned down. That the y is no longer a member of the RSTC was not the issue. The issue was the ignorance and lack of education on dive agency history of the shops/ops/employees involved. My own ow instructor was careful to not let me know there were other agencies. Scubaboard informed me of that. To the great distress of my instructor. That knowledge coupled with his practices cost him thousands of dollars of business from me.

 

[Hawkwood]

Except most OW run over 2 days....

"most" is a pretty good generalization. I certainly can't comment on what is done outside of my knowledge base. From what I know where I live and teach, there are no "2 day" courses. Therefore I can state with confidence that "most" OW classes are longer than 2 days.

The recommended course hours are 31 hours - as we are all constantly reminded, that is a minimum. Let's break down how our OW class stacks up to that.

When we teach a weekend class, we have approximately 5 hours Friday evening, and approximately 9 hours on Saturday and 9 on Sunday. That's 23 hours just for Confined water and some Knowledge development, with the Instructor.

Given that the students have to have completed Knowledge developement on their own, before starting the confinded water class sessions, either through eLearning, Open Water Touch, or the "old fashioned" Manual, they will have spent a fair amount of time on thier own. I can't say how long each student takes doing that, but I know when I took my OW a few years ago, it was at least 8 to 10 hours.

Now for the Open water portion. If students take that with us, they are either doing in two evenings in a City lake, or two days over a weekend at one of two lakes out side of town. Last time I did the evening OW dives, it was about 4-5 hours each night. The weekend dives tend to have a bit more time each day.

Gee, we actually exceed the recommended course hours.

 

[kensuf]

So most classes teach all the academic materials, all the pool sessions, and all the open water dives in two days? I've never seen it.

I've never seen oxygen or gravity, but I believe they exist.

The one dive shop that caters to recreational divers in the area spends a combined total of two days on pool and open water. Their schedule is this:

Academics - Either eLearning (and meet your instructor Friday night to review), or 3x 1.5 hour classroom sessions (W, H, F evenings)

Pool Sessions - Saturday Morning

Dives #1/2 - Saturday Afternoon
Dives #3/4 - Sunday Morning

They tend to run 8:1 or 10:2, at least those are the numbers I see every time I run into them. And they have been running about 2 classes a month right now (in the slow season???).

I've worked with a few of their former students. As you would expect, they're a mess.

 

[boulderjohn]

I've never seen oxygen or gravity, but I believe they exist.

The one dive shop that caters to recreational divers in the area spends a combined total of two days on pool and open water. Their schedule is this:

Academics - Either eLearning (and meet your instructor Friday night to review), or 3x 1.5 hour classroom sessions (W, H, F evenings)

Pool Sessions - Saturday Morning

Dives #1/2 - Saturday Afternoon
Dives #3/4 - Sunday Morning

They tend to run 8:1 or 10:2, at least those are the numbers I see every time I run into them. And they have been running about 2 classes a month right now (in the slow season???).

I've worked with a few of their former students. As you would expect, they're a mess.

I have to admit that I was an English major in both college and graduate school, so my math skills might not be all that sharp. It seems to me, though, that 2 days of pool and open water, plus either 3 evening sessions or one evening session with eLearning, plus the time the student spent preparing for the eLearning or classroom sessions adds up to more than two days.

I will go even further and say that even with that schedule, standards are almost certainly being violated. I know I can't possibly get a class through the requirements for pool sessions in a half day class. Not even close.

Finally, what I challenged was the use of the word "most." THre is a difference between "most" and "it could possibly exist somewhere."

 

[kensuf]

You can drive up and down US 1 in the keys and find the same thing everywhere.

 

[tursiops]

Every "two-day OW class" I've ever looked into in detail was actually either (a) a cert to Scuba Diver level only (less pool time, only two OW dives) or else (b) provided a referral for the four open-water dives. And, in most cases, assumed the student would do eLearning so the classroom time was minimal.

There may be shorter classes (I agree with boulderjohn, I don't know how you would meet standards except maybe with a 1:1 ratio and a good student) but I have not found one. I did find one that advertised a "one day class" but it required elearning, only gave a referral, and explicitly said many folks might not complete the pool work in one day but they could come to as many pool sessions as they wanted if they paid another $25 for each one addtional.

 

[Patoux01]

2 and a half, Sydney
2, Sydney
3, Somewhere in Thailand
2, Brisbane
2 and a half, Bali

I don't see any of those being over 31 hours, so does the time spent reading the book count in there? Let's say it does. Took me 5-6 hours to get through the book and ace (-1 question due to a mistake in the test ) the test. So then there's only Thailand respecting the standards.
To get these results, I only looked on google "Padi course Open water", except for Sydney where I know those centres. I will not even go to the groupon courses you can find.

So again, even though the standards look nice and fluffy, they're not respected or enforced, and therefore useless. I also found that most centres that would "respect" them and run courses over 3 days. Some even went the extra mile for 4 days.


We got pretty far away from OP's question though.

 

[decompression]

That would be criminal on the west coast in Drysuits and no vis.


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[Hawkwood]

That would be criminal on the west coast in Drysuits and no vis.


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Damn, I forgot the extra class, pool, and open water dive time to do it in a dry suit. There is a few hours more.