Streamlining Training

[Trace Malinowski]

For years the diving industry has been telling divers to streamline their equipment. This is an opportunity to streamline the industry. Do we have too many "dangling" courses? Would the sport benefit from less is more? Please share your thoughts.

How many class and pool sessions do you think should be conducted prior to open water dives? How many open water dives do you think would be best?

Do you think there are too many specialties? Do you think the sport would benefit from less specialties?

If you could remodel diver training how would you do it? What would be the training progression? What C-cards would you keep? What C-cards would you eliminate?

 

[BarrelRoll]

You'll get my under water pumpkin carving card from my cold dead hands, sir!

 

[Sas]

You'll get my under water pumpkin carving card from my cold dead hands, sir!

And my PADI Boat Diver card!

Ok more seriously, if I had a do-over I'd want to focus on the following skills:

-peak performance buoyancy
-nitrox
-basic decompression (I got basic deco training in BSAC Sports Diver) to 40m
-rescue skills
-dive planning. Not just following the computer but focusing on all aspects such as preparation, picking dive sites, working out their hazards, reading weather and tides, the actual dive part, appropriate equipment and redundancy for dives, gas management planning and contingency planning

Pretty much what I got out of my BSAC Sports Diver crossover and the BSAC Dive Leader course that I am doing.

The rest that I did: night diving, drift and navigation, I would have been fine progressing through that myself.

 

[kjvander]

For years the diving industry has been telling divers to streamline their equipment. This is an opportunity to streamline the industry. Do we have too many "dangling" courses? Would the sport benefit from less is more? Please share your thoughts.

How many class and pool sessions do you think should be conducted prior to open water dives? How many open water dives do you think would be best?

Do you think there are too many specialties? Do you think the sport would benefit from less specialties?

If you could remodel diver training how would you do it? What would be the training progression? What C-cards would you keep? What C-cards would you eliminate?

I guess it depends on what someone dives for. There are people out there that want to go deeper, penetrate into overhead wrecks, dive in caves, dive at night and a whole other plethera of diving that requires advanced training and more equipment. Others, simply are into diving to look at the pretty fishes and breathe underwater. There is a different draw to diving for everyone. While I don't have any desire to take the Fish ID specialty, I just ordered the Fish, Coral, and Creature ID books for my wife. That's her thing....me I'm happy to just say that I saw some fish and have no desire to learn the specific names of them.

While many people today start diving due to being or going on vacation, the "need" for some specialties still exsist. Besides to just further their training and collect a card, why would someone that is perfectly happy diving shallow reefs in Cozumel care about overhead environments or deep diving. They are more apt to the Fish ID, drift diving, and maybe some photography stuff. Just the same as someone that is a cold water diver in the midwest would have no use for a drift diving class (even though they might encounter currents in divable rivers).

I will admit that I have had made comments poking fun at the number of certifications out there...however they are there because someone, at some point saw a need.

I guess in a way I look at it like my college education. Did I need to take Bowling as an elective to get my Chemical Engineering degree, to graduate yes, in practicallity no. So why do electives exist? To extend knowlege and break up the norm. Same goes for diving.


Hopefully this was as coherent as I wanted it to be as I was typing this at 0230 in the morning....

 

[Thalassamania]

For years the diving industry has been telling divers to streamline their equipment. This is an opportunity to streamline the industry. Do we have too many "dangling" courses? Would the sport benefit from less is more? Please share your thoughts.

How many class and pool sessions do you think should be conducted prior to open water dives? How many open water dives do you think would be best?

Six pool session prior to the first O/W session seems to work well.

Do you think there are too many specialties? Do you think the sport would benefit from less specialties?

Most of the specialties should either be folded into the basic course (PPB, Rescue, Nitrox, Basic Deco, Boat, Surf, Underwater Naturalist, and such) or should be folded into a "Locally" flavored Intermediate course.

If you could remodel diver training how would you do it? What would be the training progression? What C-cards would you keep? What C-cards would you eliminate?

Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert. All others, except distinctive specialties gone.

At least that's the way I see it tonight.

 

[AndyNZ]

For years the diving industry has been telling divers to streamline their equipment. This is an opportunity to streamline the industry. Do we have too many "dangling" courses? Would the sport benefit from less is more? Please share your thoughts.

There certainly seems to be an upswelling for the "less is more" movement.

To be honest, I think that we will see a cycle of trend start to emerge. We could trim off some courses now - but in 20 years, people will be clammering for choice and individuality. Much the same, now we see people harking back to the rigours of the training of yesteryear... in 20 years time, who knows what people will be wanting?

To my mind, I'd rather see a change in understanding rather than a change in curricula. Something timeless, something where (a) instructors provide guidance on appropriate courses and understand how to add value, and (b) consumers take the time to better inform themselves.

How many class and pool sessions do you think should be conducted prior to open water dives? How many open water dives do you think would be best?

More is always going to be better. But how much are people willing to pay?

I'd define a "session" as about 2-3 hours. I'd probably want 6 or 7 sessions.

Do you think there are too many specialties? Do you think the sport would benefit from less specialties?

If someone is passionate about something, they can add value to that particular specialty. I don't think specialties are wrong as such, it's just that too many instructors see a specialty course as an inviolate thing that doesn't change. Yet every student diver is different - so again, I think this is about attitude.

 

[Diver0001]

I think I can usually get good enough results with 5 theory and 6 pool sessions "on average".

In exceptional cases I've seen students take a lot more than 6 pool sessions (in one case over 20) so I think what needs to be understood is that regardless of the approach there is no "one size fits all." The training is, and should remain performance based.

As for the courses, I think some small changes would help:
- expand OW with 2 more OW dives (6 instead of 4) in which the other two dives include specific attention on independently planning and executing a dive.

- Remove deep from AOW and expand the deep specialty with more dives. Deep diving with newbies in AOW give me the heebeejeebies because our conditions are not very suitable. I'd rather engage in more suitable activities with them.

- AOW should include the entire Navigation specialty and the nav specialty should be eliminated. This would give AOW more added value.

- AOW should include a given number of "specialties" and not a given number of "adventure dives". It needs more body than it has.

- I really like the "cafeteria model" of many specialties that focus on specific interests and it's something I would keep in. Some specialties should be reviewed to see if they really have an added value.

- I like the rescue course the way it is, but I think CBL's and some basic rescue concepts should be added to the OW course. I handle the necessary theory in OW (how to engage the EMS, what happens when you call them, etc) due to local circumstances, but I think it should be required.

R..

 

[knowone]

Hey. Wanna go divin? Yeah. Lets go. Look at the training manuals from the bigger agencies. Full of pictures, limited information, screaming at you to come back like a bloke selling steak knives, leaving you unfulfilled, like there's more, that they can do for you. It's obvious that the industry has no clout when in eight out of ten divers, shows you see, has oblivious ignorants trolling their console. Check The British Sub- Aqua Club, started diving in a crap place with cold water over fifty years ago and have manuals twice as thick, full or information in small print. All diving is unfathomably indescribable. Make a group and go.

 

[AquaExplorer]

LOL...knowone what the hell are you smoking (or drinking)? I *think* I understood what you were trying to say, sorta.

 

[rollerboi]

I think I understood.

Current major agency training manuals read like children's books, the "milk".
Many of us are clamoring for more comprehensive, in-depth training or at least the information to be accessible to us, the "meat".

Ultimately, in the end, we all just want to hit the water and dive.

(to be fair, not really sure which approach knowone was advocating, the milk or the meat?)