Review Poor Quality of Agencies' Online Training

[Rilelen]

You're not wrong. I'm a college prof; the eTraining for TDI for "Overhead Environments" is mediocre at best and the eTraining for AN/DP downright atrocious. Like, I'd be sent for remedial coaching with our teaching center if those were the materials/assessments for one of my own online classes.

In addition to all the issues OP points out, there's also the bigger issue that @boulderjohn points out: much of the actual content in the Deco Procedures eLearning is outdated and (arguably) wrong. Very confusing for students who are aware of current thinking on bubble models, and terribly misleading for those for whom it's their first introduction to deco theory.

There is nothing inherently wrong with eLearning; but it can be done well and be done poorly. The AN/DP materials are a great example of the latter.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Do you think there's any advantage in course material quality, standards, or certificate respect/reputation to getting cave trained via NSS-CDS vs TDI

Yes, I do.

 

[boulderjohn]

As someone who designed and created online course material for a living, I am very frustrated when I see the degree to which outdated material is left in some courses. In some cases, it is unavoidable, but in other cases, it certainly isn't.

When I was certified in several TDI courses, before the advent of online instruction, I had to take exams at the end of each course. Every single one of those exams had errors in them. Every single one of those exams was at least 10 years old when I took them. Every single one of them was in MS Word format and downloaded from their website. That means that at any time during those ten years, someone could have corrected those exams, and it would have taken roughly 1-2 minutes. Heck, my instructor could have fixed them before he gave them to me.

 

[mr_v]

This is 100% correct. Unfortunately, it is not limited to TDI. I wonder how many people who create diving course work and exams have the qualifications required for creation and curation of educational materials.

 

[jstotz]

You're not wrong. I'm a college prof; the eTraining for TDI for "Overhead Environments" is mediocre at best and the eTraining for AN/DP downright atrocious. Like, I'd be sent for remedial coaching with our teaching center if those were the materials/assessments for one of my own online classes.

In addition to all the issues OP points out, there's also the bigger issue that @boulderjohn points out: much of the actual content in the Deco Procedures eLearning is outdated and (arguably) wrong. Very confusing for students who are aware of current thinking on bubble models, and terribly misleading for those for whom it's their first introduction to deco theory.

There is nothing inherently wrong with eLearning; but it can be done well and be done poorly. The AN/DP materials are a great example of the latter.

Thank you for that. It makes me wonder who they have setting up and adapting the online material.

I had an additional realization while continuing AN/DP online today: Virtually all test questions(apart from a few T/F questions) are fill in the blank, often considered the laziest form of test question.

 

[jstotz]

This is 100% correct. Unfortunately, it is not limited to TDI. I wonder how many people who create diving course work and exams have the qualifications required for creation and curation of educational materials.

I've always been very proud of my B.S. in physics and have thought my master's education program was mostly BS. But upon further review, I'm tempted to agree with you: there is an art to teaching.

 

[mr_v]

I've always been very proud of my B.S. in physics and have thought my master's education program was mostly BS. But upon further review, I'm tempted to agree with you: there is an art to teaching.

Of course there is. People who think otherwise do not understand human development, psychology, and other factors related to learning processes.

 

[boulderjohn]

I retired from public education and was immediately hired as a consultant for an online education company to check out what was happening in the high school foreign language classes being taught throughout a state. I saw immediately that the classes were very poorly constructed, but what was fascinating was the results of the instruction. The classes were designed to be mostly self teaching, with the teacher offering assistance and guidance. Many students were doing really well, and many students were doing really badly. There was little in between. It was totally based upon the teacher running the class. In some classes, almost all the students were doing great, and they were happy as could be. In other classes, almost all the students were doing horribly, and they were furious. The course materials were 100% identical--the only difference was the teacher.

These results mirrored results in studies across the nation over the last decade, results that contradicted the conclusions drawn by poorly designed studies done in the 1960s. Those studies compared school performance and determined that the teacher was not important, because the results seemed to depend upon the students in the school. The problem was that they tested total school performance, not dreaming that there could be night and day differences between teachers within the school. Later studies compared the results from individual teachers, and they showed that total school averages were determined by the mathematical averages between the classes doing great and the classes doing horribly.