Thanks guys for taking the time to comment on the class. While I didn't teach this specific class, Brando and I have taught many, many classes together so I feel very comfortable speaking to some of the issues since I suspect strongly Brando runs the classes nearly identitcally to when we co-teach.
That being said, we instructors struggle continually with the proper balance of what to include in the class, how much time to spend on it, and we have seriously considered extending the time of the class. To that end, I've done what amounts to an extremely informal marketing survey, in that I talk to my students all the time about these very issues being discussed here. Invariably, we hear that the class is information overload and skill overload, but then when you ask the students would you be willing to pay more for an extra day and would you be willing to take a day off of work, more often then not you hear "no". When we originally set this workshop based class up, many students were very reluctant to pay for a class that issues no c-card, and they were even less reluctant to take time off of work for it. As the class grew in popularity and the true value of the class became more recognizable, we were asked to include more and more, which of course meant longer days, more information and added skills. For example, I like to include a demonstration of how to rescue a Toxing diver in my classes. It's beyond the scope of "standard" DIR-F class material, but the great thing about GUE is that they actually standardized the notion that instructors are "encouraged to exceed minimum standards", we have greater flexibility then most agencies to go above and beyond the core course material. Many classes love that I teach them how and why, since most who take the class have little clue how it should be done and most didn't even address the point in their Nitrox classes. However, I've recently had some students suggest that they'd prefer to eliminate that skill from the class in order to give them more time to practice their skills. So my point, of course, is that we aren't married to a "slate" clipped off to our BC and a mandatory skill set, we say every Friday night in our opening lecture that this class is your class and we can include how much, or how little, you guys want and every class I teach is different and every group usually has varying degrees of strength and weaknesses so we do our best to tailor the class to your desires. That is one of the reasons we spend, what some would offer is too much time, on Friday eveing getting to know about you and your background and desired goals.
We take very seriously the feedback we get from our students as we are constantly re-evaluating the class and constantly trying to improve it. Our earliest classes bear little, if any, relationship to what the classes look like today and that is based in large part from numerous conversations such as these, so thank you. We really want to know from the students perspective what worked and what didn't work. While our slogan is Doing It Right, we recognize that we are a small niche, we experience growing pains like any new business, and we'd like to change the class to better suit our target audience, assuming the changes don't compromise our core ideology. In short we want to be flexible but not at the expense of lowering the bar.
Hope that provides some insight as to how we approach the issue, but I'll remian available to answer questions.
Thanks
Michael Kane
