How many people were in your OW classes?

[Drew Sailbum]

OK. I can't speak to NAUI standards, so I will leave that up to others to comment on.

:snooze: Many agencies have provision for some sort of "certified assistants." PADI provides that PADI certified Divemasters, Assistant Instructors(or higher certification) may act as "certified assistants." However, PADI requires that the initial in-water demonstration of scuba skills be presented by an Open Water (or higher) rated Instructor. "Certified assistants" may then continue to work on skills with students having difficulty. The Instructor must then evaluate the student to determine if the skill has been mastered.

Each agency can set a minimum age to certify as an instructor. PADI certifies instructors as young as 18:crawl:, and Course Directors (the people who train instructors) could be as young as 20:baby:. I took my nitrox class 4 months after I certified as an instructor. My nitrox instructor was 19 years old, and had about 1000 more dives than me - he knew his stuff.

 

[large_diver]

We had about 12-15.

 

[chris_b]

Originally posted by FinMeister
Also, six 'teaching assistants' seems a little thin for begining pool work for this size group. Are the assistants certified instructors? Assistant Instructors?

Is this course a college credit course, or a recreation/community ed type course?

Finally, I'm curious. What certification, i.e., NAUI, PADI, YMCA, etc., will you have upon successful completion of this course?

Good Luck.
Warren

Warren,

See my message above yours for answers to your first and third paragraph (you probably often do like I do and type your questions while the answers are being posted!) and as for the second this is a college credit course; my wife and I are both grad students.

Now that I think about it, the pool sessions are probably not quite 30 people, probably more like upper 20's. I'll try to count tomorrow when we're at the pool. There are probably something like 8 teaching assistants, again I'm not sure of the count. I don't know what kind of certification they have, but to me are in general not "instructor" level in terms of attitude, maturity, and knowledge.

Chris

 

[Rick Murchison]

Originally posted by chris_b
Just wondering, because our class is huge; easily 30 people. It's taught at a large university, so the pool is big enough to accomodate everyone. There are half a dozen or so "Teaching Assistants" who presumably have advanced training, but the instructor himself (who has been teaching the course since 1968) never gets in the water.

However, I think it's just too many people. The instructor has to rush through everything in the two-hour pool sessions, so some people kind of get left behind.

Is this common?

Thanks,

Chris

This is disturbing. Unless the "teaching assistants" are rated instructors, your class is violating every standard there is re:student/instructor ratios. What agency is this class ostensibly in compliance with?
Rick

 

[flash]

Mine had six students for OW and two students for AOW. I can't imagine more than six--waiting around for everybody else to complete all the skills would get real old real fast, I would think.

 

[Walter]

Contact NAUI ASAP! Your instructor is violating NAUI standards by not getting in the water with students. I'd have to check written standards on pool ratios.

DSSW,

WWW

 

[Tanstaafl]

I had three people in my class. The instructor had two assistants. I have done most of my diving with the same bunch since the class. A friend of mine owned the LDS.

 

[bgonderi]

The classroom portion of our OW class totaled 5 people. For the pool sessions, we had one instructor (same one that taught the classroom portion) who was "assisted" by two other divers, one who was an instructor, and the other who was OW certified (was the wife of one of the students, so she really just buddied with and helped him out).

For our OW dives, my wife and I had one instructor all to ourselves. We were in Hawaii about three weeks after 9-11, so there were not a lot of crowds.

 

[Bob]

We had five in my class, plus the instructor, one AI and a divemaster. This was an enjoyable class for me.:tree:Bob

 

[socaldiver]

There were 6 of us in our class, with an AI and a DM

Plenty of time to work on skills.