Survey Results: Student Preparedness & Satisfaction Following Pool/Confined Water

[descent]

When viewing the entire presentation on your site, there's something to learn from almost every slide. Thanks Ray!

Yes, these have been a surprise and a delight.

I admire statistical rigor, thoughtful attention to detail and high-quality data visualization. We get to see all three in the posts and associated articles.

Doing the work and sharing with colleagues is good for the field. Sharing widely and participating in the following discussion is good for the entire diving community.

Definitely ... thanks Ray!

 

[TSandM]

people can teach themselves to dive given enough time.

One of the things my husband says to his students, and often repeats, is, "I can't teach you to dive. I can give you ideas, pointers, feedback and tips, but diving is a 'feel' activity, and you have to learn to do it."

I am far from thinking there is no value in instruction. To the contrary, I think instruction can be extremely useful or even necessary. It can shorten the learning curve and avoid the development and solidification of bad habits. Instructors can answer questions which might be difficult to formulate in a way that online search would easily provide the answers. And instructors remain the bulwark of safety to protect student divers from their own errors.

But, almost exactly like learning to ride a bicycle, the odd act of floating while balancing equipment and propelling oneself through the water is a 'feel' activity, and the diver has to learn the motor skills and the perceptual-response feedback loops for himself.

 

[RJP]

Longer course actual separate students from the goal of diving, because there is the unfounded belief that long courses results in something other than wasting someone's time.

It's simply unfounded. (And repeating it again and again does not make it so.) Long courses do not result in better divers because of their length. They may accidentally make for better divers because, as I have see every day in Hawaii, people can teach themselves to dive given enough time. Our goal as instructors is (or should be) to save students time, to make their learning vastly more effectively and efficient than if we were not there.

I think you are having trouble recognizing the fact that the vast majority of people in the world do not live - much less train - "every day in Hawaii" like you do. For a NJ pharma executive and his family learning to dive or a Colorado lawyer and his wife... two hours a night, twice a week, for 3-4 weeks might be the ideal schedule for them to learn to dive. Further, if someone is seeking to get certified for a vacation they are going on in eight weeks... the length of the course is not "standing in their way" of anything.

Not saying that pool/academics should drag on incessantly... but there's no reason to rush through it if work/life/vacation logistics are the rate limiting factor anyway.

I'm also struggling to reconcile your desire/belief that - ceteris paribus - shorter is better when there's now data from ~700 student divers, the majority of whom seem to agree that's not the case based on their own experience.

 

[boulderjohn]

There is a constraining factor for scheduling the supposed ideal setup for many shops. If you do not have your own dedicated dive pool, you have to use another pool that has another primary usage. Let's say you are a shop that has to rent a bunch of lanes at a recreation center. Let's compare two ways of scheduling 8 hours of pool time and see which one you would choose as the shop owner.

Four two hour sessions over several weeks: Before every single session, you have to have students come in and get their gear ready for travel, probably stuffing it in a bag you supply. Before each of the four sessions, you load all the gear, tanks, and weights into truck or van, drive it to the recreation center, and then carry all of it into the recreation center. After each session, you will have to undo all of that, including putting all the gear out to dry and returning it to its place.

Two four hour sessions on a weekend: The students put their gear in bags, and you put it all in the truck or van with the tanks and weights. You drive it all to the recreation center, and then carry it inside. After the first session, you have to take everything back into the van, but there is no need to unpack the students gear, dry it, etc., because it will be used again the next day. You repeat the loading/unloading process the next day.

The first option requires your staff to do more twice as much work to accomplish the same goal, and please do not underestimate the effort it takes to do all that, especially if you have to carry it all as far as we do to get from the van to the recreation center. If you switch from the second option to the first without adding pay to the staff, don't expect a lot of happy people there.

 

[RJP]

"Ideal" and "easy" are often two different things.

I think I read that in a fortune cookie...

:d

 

[beanojones]

I think you are having trouble recognizing the fact that the vast majority of people in the world do not live - much less train - "every day in Hawaii" like you do. For a NJ pharma executive and his family learning to dive or a Colorado lawyer and his wife... two hours a night, twice a week, for 3-4 weeks might be the ideal schedule for them to learn to dive. Further, if someone is seeking to get certified for a vacation they are going on in eight weeks... the length of the course is not "standing in their way" of anything.

Not saying that pool/academics should drag on incessantly... but there's no reason to rush through it if work/life/vacation logistics are the rate limiting factor anyway.

I'm also struggling to reconcile your desire/belief that - ceteris paribus - shorter is better when there's now data from ~700 student divers, the majority of whom seem to agree that's not the case based on their own experience.

(Just a note: I would like every single post from every single poster in this thread, but for whatever reason, I cannot like things right now die to some weird browser dealio.)

I understand the exceptionalism of being in Hawaii. My point about Hawaii is that it is one of the few places where "not dive certified" is not the big deal not being certified is in other places (from a practical standpoint lie getting fills and whatnot.) People who work fulltime as divers (fishing, tropical fish collecting, hull cleaning, etc. etc.) just don't have to get certified. I was diving with a guy on and off for a couple years on our own boats before I realized he did not have a license.

He had all his own gear, and tanks, etc. and he had never bothered to get certified. And this is from someone who builds their life around diving!! If getting certified has little (or worse, negative) value for someone who values diving greatly, then there is something wrong with the approach to teaching diving. Six week courses?? Additional material for the uncertified diver?? Adding content to an Open Water course? Self publishing additional material for open water courses?? What kind of ego makes someone think that is of any actual value to the only necesary person in the dive certification process??

Hint: the only necessary person in a dive certification process is the student.

It was an eye-opening realization to figure out that what we as instructors do is completely unnecessary, and it completely changed my mental approach to teaching. We give are taught to give lip service the idea of value during the IDC/IE, and then once we become instructors, guys like that CD (Course Director) I mentioned above (whom makes his living teaching and evaluating instructor candidates!!!) completely forget his entire raison d'etre. Our role not to teach diving; it is to help people learn to dive.

We, as instrcutors, are simply not a necessary part of the process at all.

Any time an instructor deigns to open their mouth to bestow their wisdom on students, instead of realizing that entire role of the instructor is instrically parasitic on the students desire to get certified, bad things result. Humility (well, that, and empathy) in the role of the instructor is key.

Talking about humility that may sound strange given my own tendency to positively assess my own worth as an instructor, but my entire worth as an instructor comes from my awareness that what I do is completely replaceable by nothing at all, and working from that realization outwards.

 

[RJP]

As I used to tell people that worked for me... never confuse "being valuable" with "being irreplaceable."

 

[widget]

Quoting myself because this is the point. It takes almost no time at all for people to comfortably and effectively dive (basically) neutrally buoyant. It takes some minor time to add appropriate reactions to problems on top of that.

And that's why I am relaying what BoulderJohn has said many many times about the fact that one time in the pool DSD's are very often better divers than OW students coming out of CW 1-5. The DSD's have no tools to deal with the extraneous stuff that does not usually happen on the average dive, but the actual core goal of behind getting certified (i.e. being able to move through the water comfortably and effectively) happens in no time at all.

Longer course actual separate students from the goal of diving, because there is the unfounded belief that long courses results in something other than wasting someone's time.

It's simply unfounded. (And repeating it again and again does not make it so.) Long courses do not result in better divers because of their length. They may accidentally make for better divers because, as I have see every day in Hawaii, people can teach themselves to dive given enough time. Our goal as instructors is (or should be) to save students time, to make their learning vastly more effectively and efficient than if we were not there.

And most dive instruction, and most dive instructors, simply don't get that our role is completely replaceable by no instruction at all, if all we can do is teach someone to dive in six weeks.

Any can teach themselves to dive quicker than that.

I respectfully disagree.

Of course anyone can teach themselves to dive, we did it for years before the mantra of PADI, NAUI, SSI and so forth became common, we also had an abnormal number of over weighted people bouncing around the bottom suffering mask squeeze, narcosis, embolisms, out of air emergencies, decompression sickness and occasionally death.

Yes there are folk who have been diving for years, have never taken a formal class and are pretty good at it, but the catch word here is "they dive regularly and have been doing so for years" often as you mention, its their job.

This is far, far removed from the average Joe and May who do a three day course and get qualified. How many of these folks then go and spend 40 hours brushing up their skills in the pool or a sheltered confined water on their own accord - none that I know of, but realistically thats what they need to do. A longer course forces them to do this.

I think we need to differentiate between a mechanical dive skill and actually been dive confident in that skill, anyone can be taught a mechanical skill in minutes, but it takes hours to hone that skill and to be confident and comfortable enough to use that skill in all conditions, good and bad, and in my opinion, thats where a longer course shines.

 

[Jack Hammer]

I used to live in Hawaii. A lot of those "self taught" folks may not have formal training, however they didn't just go by gear, hop in the water, and figure it out on their own. They learned from their friends how to do things.

 

[Peter Guy]

Any time an instructor deigns to open their mouth to bestow their wisdom on students, instead of realizing that entire role of the instructor is instrically parasitic on the students desire to get certified, bad things result.

Bull Pucky.

Instructors (whether you call them coaches, mentors or idiots) CAN provide significant help to one learning how to dive (or any other activity). Beano -- you are beginning to sound like "The Music Man" pleading with "the band" to "Think men, Think."

Every top notch athlete has a coach to help them improve. Do you really think those coaches are parasites on the Michael Jordans and Tiger Woods of the world?

The job of the instructor, in scuba diving, is to assist the student in the learning process which will mean providing both verbal and non-verbal aids. Too much verbal assistance is counter-productive but so is too little -- and unless the student understands the non-verbal instruction, it may well be useless unless explained to the student verbally.