How happy are you with today's level of Diver Education?

[Aquaventurewhitetip]

I am a Padi instructor and agree its not the perfect OW course, yes I agree it wouls take a long time to complete 50 dives but is the point. How many better OW divers have we seen than AOW or above in the same group. Maybe this is because those OW divers actually dive more or have dived more giving them more experience.
I also agree many aspects of the AOW should actually be included in the OW course and I think probably 6 qualifying dives would be a step in the right direction. This would enable you as an Instructor to include more that I am sure most of us add when we can anyway.
Also the AOW should probably include many elements of the now Rescue course, we don't need to list them as I am sure all are aware.
Best thing is to try to give as much as you can to each student and try to provide as much as you can. Hard I know if you teach in a resort etc.
My OW was good and taught me so much and gave me so much confidence and enthusiasm I never looked back. Partly because it was not squeezed into 3 days on a hot beach in between distraction you can get on holiday.
I am not saying its a bad thing to learn on holiday but it falls to the instructor to try as hard as he or she can to to keep it fun but serious as well. Thats until I guess we all grow gills and have no more need for scuba.

 

[Thalassamania]

Gee ... you do all those things and you'd set PADI back, oh ... about thirty years.

 

[Aquaventurewhitetip]

Sad to say but thats probably right, but unfortunately instead of trying to split courses to make more products they could strengthen existing courses. I think its great that they are trying to make such easy access to everybody, quickly and easily but there must be a point to stop or you may just end up diluting the course. Or just keep the course as it is and add two more dives. Make one the Nav and the other just a good old fashioned pleasure dive under supervision.

 

[Diver0001]

Whatever I'm not going to sit here and argue with you.

That's good to know.

I don't need a study to tell me something I have had direct experience with.

Well, as a PhD student you're probably aware that studies attempt to measure the rules, not the exceptions. If you really work better by cramming then I'm envious of you but you're definitely an exception. The majority of people evidently do better if they spread the learning out, which is also why teachers encourage their students NOT to cram. Intuitively, most people realize that cramming isn't the best way to study.

When applied to scuba courses, one could hypothesize that short duration courses lasting a couple of days result in divers who on the long term--especially if they don't dive often--have more trouble with it than their counterparts who take the course over a period of 6 weeks or so.

Anecdotally, what I see in Scuba Reviews confirms this. ex-resort students, in stark contrast to inactive "local students" often have absolutely no recollection of ever having learned some of the skills. Sometimes they have an "Ah-HA" moment after they're shown teh skill again, and sometimes they tell me that they never learned it.

Of course there IS a possibility that they never learned it, but there's a strong possibility that they forgot it too.

R..

 

[Aquaventurewhitetip]

I agree with the above, thanks I think Diver0001.

 

[Thalassamania]

Anecdotally, what I see in Scuba Reviews confirms this. ex-resort students, in stark contrast to inactive "local students" often have absolutely no recollection of ever having learned some of the skills. Sometimes they have an "Ah-HA" moment after they're shown teh skill again, and sometimes they tell me that they never learned it.

Of course there IS a possibility that they never learned it, but there's a strong possibility that they forgot it too.

R..

I do not do scuba reviews, but what you are saying makes sense.

 

[Diver0001]

I have heard many people suggest that the AOW course be removed because of it being perceived as being ineffective. In it's current form it probably is.

Acutally, I don't think the problems with AOW are symptomatic of something wrong with AOW. It's symptomatic of something wrong with OW, namely that the OW course is squarely positioned to getting divers in resort settings into the water, diving (and paying) as fast as humanly possible.

Really, what needs to happen is that the current OW course needs to be split into two courses. A resort course along the lines of what we now have. We could give it a new name like "resort diver" and an open water course for people who want to learn how to dive independently.

You don't *need* to teach good navigation or deep diving or night diving to someone who just wants to swim along behind a DM and bounce over the bottom in clear warm water looking at the pretty fishes. But you DO need to teach these things to people who want to plan and execute their own dives.

I think it's clear that the OW course falls short of providing beginners who want to dive independently of all the skills they need. Some of that gets delayed to our current AOW format. I think if we just were to admit that resort divers and "independednt OW divers" need different skills and different intensities of training that a lot of things would fall right into place.

R..

 

[Aquaventurewhitetip]

Cool, maybe OW I and OW II.. Resort Diver sounds a bit diminutive.
Change the max depth. Say 16mtr and 20mtr. then Padi still have a sales angle to encourage divers to complete part II or at least to continue. There are alot of fish and coral in 16mtrs don't forget.

 

[Diver0001]

OWI and OWII works for me.

So we'd have OWI something like what OW is now. OWII something like the current OW+AOW+a bit of rescue and the bar set higher w.r.t. dive planning and navigation skills. Adventure diver to keep the cafeteria model in place (I think this is a strong point of the PADI system as long as it's not being used to plug the holes in the beginners courses) and then some other stuff.

It seems more logical to me to structure it along these lines. What's not logical to me is to create a course for people who essentially want to be tourist divers on their vacations and assume it will work for everyone, including people who *want* to dive independently, or who don't dive in the tropics.

To be honest, I think even the current format would allow an instructor to do what I'm describing, but the fact that you don't *have* to do that leads a lot of shops to offer an OW course that isn't suitable to the environment or the clientele that they have. As an instructor, I would sure like to have some backup from the agency so the shop couldn't sell something that's hard to make work and I think the LDS's outside the "tourist route" would like to have some agency backup too so they have a way to differentiate themselves from the resorts instead of feeling they need to compete with resorts.

I hope this doesn't sound as much like a "stream of consciousness" as I'm afraid it will...

R..

 

[Aquaventurewhitetip]

This is the problem though, many of us seem to agree on the same points and suggestions but where would you stop.
Water rating on a pick, you can only dive in conditions, temps, equip that you certified in?
I did all my training in the English Channel through to Instructor then only added to the instructor ratings in warm water.
I know the difference between a diver who has only toured Asia or Oz to one who has been lucky enough or whatever to have had as big a variety in there diving as they can.
This is not to outwardly say warm water divers are not as good as cold water divers just to point out that they have to use and have had to develop different skills.
Back to the point an OW I diver rated to 16mtrs want to do a shallow dive in North America or The UK etc. They will find it challenging and add to the dive groups things to worry about.
Maybe I am being random now, sorry.