PADI eBusiness - Atomic Online - 800 Pound Gorilla in the Room

[Jarrett]

Thanks for the info, Phil.

 

[matts1w]

You can get a college degree from an accredited online university, you can do your classroom portion of OW online.

Agreed... Probably 40 percent of my master's degree was done through E-learning classes. I have to honest: I thought the online classes would be easy, but they turned out to be MUCH tougher than classes in the real world.

Hopefully PADI will provide a great class with high standards.

 

[DiveMaven]

I have to agree that e-learning isn't necessarily a bad thing. IMO it is a definite positive to have standardized teaching, rather than the varied teaching that is going on right now. When I compare my OW class to a friend's experience, I'm stunned and how little her instructor seemed to teach compared to my instructor.

Personally, I prefer having my materials way before my class so I can read and learn, and do the knowledge reviews before starting the skills portion of my training. This is how we did it for OW and AOW, and now Rescue.

 

[steve70638]

The fact that only 50 indepenndent dive shop owners attended the online retainling presentation is proof of the perspective that many shop owners are burrying their heads in the sand about the reality of online sales. Furthermore I wonder if you guys in the panel had added Leisurepro (the other 800 lb gorilla) to your panel what percentage of scuba retail sales you would represent.

 

[Maule]

Thanks for the good read. I keep telling my local LDS he is gonna have to get with the internet plan. Unfortunately, I think he is playing Ostrich.

 

[PhilEllis]

Be afraid. Be V-E-R-Y afraid!

RJP....man, you confuse me. One the one hand, I love reading your stuff. The insight into the world of marketing comes smooth from a professional like yourself. On the other hand, I am amazed at your apparent inability to stretch your mind just a little. You further confuse me with your constant critique of what happens in this industry and sport, all the while claiming to know how it should be done, but refusing to tell us because "you get paid for that". A clever technique, one pulled off with equal ease by a skilled professional like yourself or a shill. I will attempt to help you though the understanding process. See if this helps............

Now, I'm not knocking the web or e-learning per se. But it's bad enough (sorry to say it) the first time someone comes out on a boat off NJ who's got their AOW and 30 dives in their logbook but has never been diving anywhere but a pool and a quarry.

I am constantly amazed how every diver claims that the other divers are always less trained than they are. It is simply a trait of human nature I guess. We all see ourselves as somewhat better prepared than we probably are. It doesn't matter how you were trained, the first time you go out on a boat for NJ diving, it will be a shock. Having personally done some amount of that exact diving myself, I can attest to it. As PADI has ALWAYS SAID, never dive in conditions for which you have not been trained and do not have experience. The delivery of the home-study portion of the PADI Open Water class through the internet instead of a book makes a student no more or no less able to dive in any certain conditions. Though the particulars of the PADI program are yet undeveloped, nothing (other than laziness) prevents a local instructor from adding lectures to his or her class to prepare a student for local conditions or additional type of diving other than the pool or quarry. Because you got training in some conditions you consider more difficult, don't make the foolish jump to a conclusion that you are better trained than others who did not experience your same conditions. I could show you some good old Alabama country boys (in fact, lots of them), trained exclusively in a rock quarry, that dive with the skill, authority, and situational awareness that would make you envious.

Soon those same people won't even have MET anyone along the way who has ever been diving outside a pool or a quarry. Seriously. I could do my "e-Learning" on line, my "e-Mentor" could be a guy in Cozumel who does my pool work and OW checkouts, and my "e-Tailer" could be in West Palm Beach.

There will be nothing about eLearning that makes this situation any different from the current status quo. A student that has a text book, in a little blue zipper bag, and attends a workshop in a local store on dive tables, will be no more or no less prepared than one who receives those same materials on the internet and follows a scientific study process designed by PADI, the worlds foremost experts on beginner scuba diving education, remediated by added lectures on local conditions by a skilled scuba instructor. And you are exactly correct.....you could do your eLearning on line, your e-Mentor could be a guy in Cozumel who does your pool work and OW checkouts, and your eTailer could be in West Palm Beach. What possible problem could you have with that, if it meets your desires and choices for your anticipated type of diving?

But it's cold and it's dark and it's deep. And it looks NOTHING like the shiny happy people in the PADI books and website diving on white sand beaches. If I had been certified "on-line" or even in a resort setting, I would never have thought to go diving in the ocean that is across the street from my house. And if I had thought of it, I would have been woefully unprepared, and would never have come back after the first time. The best thing my LDS and instructors ever did for me was teach me how to dive HERE. Stuff that wasn't in the book, or in "the standards." Simple things like "the book says XXXXXX and it's good information and you need to know that as the minimum, but here's what that REALLY means when the water is 38 degrees, the boat is hopping 4-6ft, everyone including the captain is puking their guts up, viz is 5ft at best, there's a ripping current and your buddy gives you the hand signal for 'see ya back on the boat, I'm heading this way for lobsters' as soon as you hit the anchor."

First, you can't get certified to dive on the internet. You have never been able to do so, and you will not be able to do so with eLearning. You know that. Why throw out that straw man? That technique is below the standards of a man of your skill and education. Would dive training be better and would divers be better if PADI portrayed a couple of miserable, cold divers......riding a small boat in rough seas.....heading for a dive that is cold, dark, and miserable? For a man of your claimed skill in marketing, faulting PADI for putting a pleasant face on dive education is simply silly. After all, you do the SAME THING for your clients, and you get paid to do it! Give me a break. I agree...the best thing your local dive store did for you was to teach you the stuff that isn't in the books or in the "standards". That wouldn't change even one little bit if you had done your pre-class academic study from a PADI eLearning program.

Let's cut to the chase, and we can load about 100 different log-book pages for great dives on the web. Then you can simply download them, print them out, and put them in your log book. We'll call it "e-Diving" and can even offer a specialty certification.

"Here's the time John and Richie and I dove the Doria..."

You can do that now and you will be able to do that later. eLearning has absolutely no influence on that. Not one little bit. As free individuals, we have been, we are, and will always be, perfectly able to include in our log book pages dives we have never made, dive buddies we have never met, and vivid descriptions of places we have never visited. eLearning does not change that one little bit. If that is a persons pleasure, our unregulated sport allows completely for it.

What PADI eLearning Will Actually Be. Currently, a PADI Retail Center maintains inventory of various student kits and training materials. In my store, our inventory of PADI materials is valued, at cost, at about $8,000 at any particular moment. We deliver those materials to a scuba student in anticipation of making a few dollars (the profit). With eLearning, we will have the equal ability to deliver those same training materials, in a different form, and the chance to make a few dollars (the profit). The difference is....if we so choose, we don't have to maintain the inventory and don't have the related costs of that maintenance. A student may complete their study with eLearning in advance of their dive class, just as they may do now....with one difference.....PADI will ensure that each student goes through the same pre-class learning process. Nothing would prevent a particular instructor from conducting the same lectures currently offered. Nothing would prevent a particular instructor from adding local content to the local lectures. Nothing will prevent a particular instructor from continuing to purchase the existing student kits, complete with the manual and all of the stuff that comes in the kit, just like they do now. Nothng will prevent a particular instructor or dive center from offering the EXACT CLASS THEY NOW OFFER! In fact, independent instructors will apparently be forced to continue that practice until PADI determines it is no longer in their interest to continue to print the materials. For the PADI Dive Center, I think eLearning will increase sales of training materials. There will be many students that choose to sign up for the eLearning (and pay for it), but still desire to purchase the text book from the local store. The store will benefit from "dual" sales of the same materials in two different forms.

PADI will assume the role of maintaining the critical documents (medical form, limited liability form, PADI Safe Divng Practices, quizzies, final exam) that are currently maintained by the instructor for the required 7 year period. Upon completion of the eLearning process, PADI will deliver the final exam (I assume, from my preliminary discussions with them) and the student will receive a referral to the local center upon completion. The dive store will be relieved from the responsibility for document maintenance and the referral from PADI will provide all of the necessary evidence of learning completion and some measure of liability insulation for the dive center in the event of legal action as a result of "poor academic education".

PADI Dive Centers will now have an avenue to segment the cost of the training into its three distinct elements......academic learning, confined water training, and open water skill evaluation. We can finally get past the practice of selling dive training for "$250, books included. For the dive center, this might serve to nudge the price a little higher, finally realizing a much fairer price for the training experience.....a concept and benefit that many on this board support in the many discussions about the changes taking place in this industry.

In my view, when the folks at PADI finally get this program sealed and in the can, students will benefit by being able to get instruction through the media of their choice, dive centers will benefit from many of the methods outlined above, and the industry will be better for the change. A win-win situation.

RJP.....tell us what to do. Do a little pro bono work. Like me, you don't ALWAYS have to get paid for what you do. Thanks man.

Phil Ellis

 

[Guba]

Nice report and analysis, Phil, of both your experiences at DEMA and RJP's post.
Now, I'm not down on RJP and what he said, but he highlights only the most dark and negative aspects of online learning. I'm in professional education (science) and I see the positives and negatives of both online and "in-person" education. And don't harbor the thought of "yeah, but that's traditioal school...it can't kill you". I teach laboratory sciences and the things we use in here will most definitely ruin your day if you're careless or unprepared. But that's the commonality to diving...not that it's potentially dangerous, but that there are both academic and "hands on" elements. While the academic portion might be handled by online resources, the laboratory portion of the classes would be impossible in realistic terms. Watching a video or computer simulation of a lab simply isn't the same as performing the experiment yourself. Scuba will likely be taught much the same way. The online portion can handle the academics, but the hands-on portion will still remain the domain of a qualified, dedicated, talented professional willing to share his skills, insight, and knowledge with a student.
As for the scenario RPJ described, I'll be the first to admit that I'll be back on the boat and will welcome divers aboard as they return. I've got plenty of ocean dives (and not all in pristine, beautiful waters with no current--some are deep, dark and ripping) but I know when to pull the plug. The point is that NO open water training is going to prepare a new diver for the conditions you described. Oh, you can go over it and even outline what the conditions are like, but the only teacher that will adequately do the job is "old man experience". One simply has to be there to know what it's like.
So it's a non-unique argument. Training a diver online for the adademic part is not inherently bad. The real test will be how the dive trainers continue to do their jobs.

 

[PhilEllis]

The fact that only 50 indepenndent dive shop owners attended the online retainling presentation is proof of the perspective that many shop owners are burrying their heads in the sand about the reality of online sales. Furthermore I wonder if you guys in the panel had added Leisurepro (the other 800 lb gorilla) to your panel what percentage of scuba retail sales you would represent.

Steve, it would "roughly" double it. My estimation is that Leisure Pro is, by far, the largest............today. But they had better not underestimate the abilities of Larry and Jim.

Phil Ellis

 

[boulderjohn]

Agreed... Probably 40 percent of my master's degree was done through E-learning classes. I have to honest: I thought the online classes would be easy, but they turned out to be MUCH tougher than classes in the real world.

Hopefully PADI will provide a great class with high standards.

Online education is my profession.

Last week I made a presentation at a national conference (Virtual School Symposium in Texas) about the reasons students fail online classes--and many do. The primary reason is that they are expecting something quite different from what they get, and they start off the class in accordance with what they are expecting rather than what they are getting. They are seriously misinformed about the nature of quality online education, and by the time they figure out what the class expects of them, they are in deep trouble.

The number one problem--by far--is an expectation that the course will have low standards and be easy. They don't expect to have to work hard, and they are shocked by the amount of time and effort they have to expend. It is not just the students--the attitude is everywhere. For example, I experienced a high school guidance counselor who decided that a student for whom English was a second language and who had a history of failing classes would be better of in an online Advanced Placement English Literature (!) class, because "online classes are easier." (For those of you who don't know, getting a good score on the Advanced Placement English Lit exam--not even the top score--has been shown to be roughly the equivalent of getting an A in a sophomore English class in a competitive college.)

Another problem is the students expect to be able to "cheat" in the way they have in all their other classes in school, and they are surprised when they can't. (This is a shocker for most people, who assume it is easier to cheat online.) It depends upon your definition of cheating. When given a reading assignment in a regular class, the average student cheats by skipping the reading, figuring to get enough info to pass the test when the teacher goes over the material in class. They can't do that in a properly designed online class--they can't pass the assessments without doing the work.

It would take me a long time to revisit that entire presentation, but let me summarize by saying that every time someone brings up this topic in this forum, I see the same misunderstandings repeated. Mostly people see it as a lowering of standards. That is the hugest of all misconceptions. There is no reason that it can't be a raising of standards instead.

And, as others have pointed out, it should go without saying that eLearning will not in any way ever replace the need to perform the diving skills exactly as it is done today.

 

[PhilEllis]

Online education is my profession.

Last week I made a presentation at a national conference (Virtual School Symposium in Texas) about the reasons students fail online classes--and many do. The primary reason is that they are expecting something quite different from what they get, and they start off the class in accordance with what they are expecting rather than what they are getting. They are seriously misinformed about the nature of quality online education, and by the time they figure out what the class expects of them, they are in deep trouble.

The number one problem--by far--is an expectation that the course will have low standards and be easy. They don't expect to have to work hard, and they are shocked by the amount of time and effort they have to expend. It is not just the students--the attitude is everywhere. For example, I experienced a high school guidance counselor who decided that a student for whom English was a second language and who had a history of failing classes would be better of in an online Advanced Placement English Literature (!) class, because "online classes are easier." (For those of you who don't know, getting a good score on the Advanced Placement English Lit exam--not even the top score--has been shown to be roughly the equivalent of getting an A in a sophomore English class in a competitive college.)

Another problem is the students expect to be able to "cheat" in the way they have in all their other classes in school, and they are surprised when they can't. (This is a shocker for most people, who assume it is easier to cheat online.) It depends upon your definition of cheating. When given a reading assignment in a regular class, the average student cheats by skipping the reading, figuring to get enough info to pass the test when the teacher goes over the material in class. They can't do that in a properly designed online class--they can't pass the assessments without doing the work.

It would take me a long time to revisit that entire presentation, but let me summarize by saying that every time someone brings up this topic in this forum, I see the same misunderstandings repeated. Mostly people see it as a lowering of standards. That is the hugest of all misconceptions. There is no reason that it can't be a raising of standards instead.

And, as others have pointed out, it should go without saying that eLearning will not in any way ever replace the need to perform the diving skills exactly as it is done today.

Bravo! What he said!

Phil Ellis