Water skill levels of Open Water students & course pace

[cocoajoe]

One instructor, and one to two aides - not certified instructors. In a couple of pools sessions only the instructor was teaching.
To stay as anonymous as I can, I'm not going to say how many students were in the class, only that it was more than four.

Hard to say from your statement "more than four" (students).. Not a instructor nor do I want to be. But I can tell you from my own experience, my class was too big for the instuctors/help shop had on hand. I remember I had a problem getting back in BC (after taking it off)....nobody around. Finally got kitted back up and still instructors were not close enough to see if I had got it right or not. Guess they assumed I did it right since I wasn't lying motionless on the bottom of the pool..
In any case you got through it. But something else concerns me....your statement "there will be students who panic". That was you? Chances are, as you spend more time in the water, the more comfortable you'll be. Consider paying a DM to buddy with you on a couple of dives. Be sure to tell him/her your experience level and what you want to work on. Appx $50 and well wort the money

 

[Diver0001]

My OW classes are on average 7 weeks with 8 being the norm. two nights a week. Classroom one night and 2 - 2 1/2 hours pool the other night. Min of 16 hours in the pool.

I'm curious what you pay for 16 hours of pool time

The trick I've discovered to being efficient, cost effective AND to deliver high-quality is to spend relatively more time in open water than the course prescribes. Now that I'm doing my own thing I've restructured how I spend the bottom time in OW. I start taking students to open water after the 3rd confined session and spend in total about 6 hours on the bottom over 8-10 dives in open water and the other 5-6 hours in the pool.

So far I'm seeing that you can get incredibly good results with 6 hours of bottom time in the pool and 6 solid hours on the bottom in open water. FAR better results, in fact, than 12 hours in the pool and then "check outs" after that. And on top of it all, it's much more interesting for both the instructor and the student.

I know you're a "quality first" kind of guy Jim so I'd offer you the suggestion to try it. Experiment with cutting back your pool time by 6 hours and three weeks and doing part of the training in open water. You'll lower your pool costs, quicken up the course and I'm betting that you'll book better results too. You'll need to tighten up logistics but I'm sure you can do it.

R..

 

[RJP]

So....what exactly are you trying to tell me?

I know I sucked in the beginning, and I still have a long way to go, but I've made huge leaps. Is everyone supposed to breeze through?

It's certainly not unlikely that some, small number of students would benefit from a course longer than six weeks. However, those people would be on the extreme outlier end of the normal distribution. Further from the median to that end than the few people who would benefit from a three-day executive course on the other extreme.

I would assume that in your six-week class that you weren't taught anything additional that students in three-week classes were taught. Nor did you receive any significantly greater amounts of pool time or open water time, I would imagine. With the assumption that "making the course longer" would simply entail the same total amount amount of classroom, pool, and OW instruction time over a greater number days... I'm not sure how that would be of benefit to most students.

 

[supergaijin]

Is the OP the same person that posted a couple of weeks ago saying they couldn't snorkel swim in a pool? If it is indeed the same person I would suggest that they were 'expecting the instructor to turn them in to a diver' as opposed to paying for 'scuba training'.

A 5 (full day) course is not common at all in the 'vacation areas' where I have done most of my instructing- more common is 4 days and even 3 in some backpacker areas. A couple of times I have had to either fail students or dissuade them from continuing with the fairly expensive training until they've learnt to master the basics that 'scuba instruction' is not really designed to teach.

Basic swimming/watermanship skills- it does imply comfort in the water and therefore usually a fairly easy transition in to snorkeling and diving skills.

 

[SubMariner]

OP -- Very sorry about your experience BUT, quite frankly, most people would find a 6 week open water course to be extremely long.

So....what exactly are you trying to tell me?

I know I sucked in the beginning, and I still have a long way to go, but I've made huge leaps. Is everyone supposed to breeze through?

I don't think that's what Peter Guy is saying at all. I believe he is referring to the fact that since many people do not have the patience or time to do six weeks of scuba instruction, most certifications run much shorter than that time frame.

It's not a matter of "breezing through", but of how to make it easier for you to acquire the knowledge/skills you need to succeed in scuba. To be honest, it does not appear that your style of learning lends itself to group instruction. So I would have to agree with some comments here that you would be best served by an individual, 1 on 1 course.

Pax,

 

[flots am]

I'm curious what you pay for 16 hours of pool time

We run about the same class as Jim, and the pool cost isn't really relevant, since we rent it for the entire year. If there are one, two or three classes in the pool on any given night it's not really a problem.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I'm curious what you pay for 16 hours of pool time

The trick I've discovered to being efficient, cost effective AND to deliver high-quality is to spend relatively more time in open water than the course prescribes. Now that I'm doing my own thing I've restructured how I spend the bottom time in OW. I start taking students to open water after the 3rd confined session and spend in total about 6 hours on the bottom over 8-10 dives in open water and the other 5-6 hours in the pool.

So far I'm seeing that you can get incredibly good results with 6 hours of bottom time in the pool and 6 solid hours on the bottom in open water. FAR better results, in fact, than 12 hours in the pool and then "check outs" after that. And on top of it all, it's much more interesting for both the instructor and the student.

I know you're a "quality first" kind of guy Jim so I'd offer you the suggestion to try it. Experiment with cutting back your pool time by 6 hours and three weeks and doing part of the training in open water. You'll lower your pool costs, quicken up the course and I'm betting that you'll book better results too. You'll need to tighten up logistics but I'm sure you can do it.

R..

As long as you convince SEI to lower the minimum pool time standard. Standards dictate 16 hours. And have them take out the rescue skills. And have them tell me that I can no longer do buddy breathing swims, no mask swims, the bailout drill, station breathing, and blacked out mask drills.

And tell the shop owner who charges me the opportunity to sell my students gear for pool time to change that to actual cash payments over the token amount I give him for unlimited use of the pool.

Oh and I can't take students by standards to open water until the pool work is completed. Checkouts are not training. They are to evaluate that the student can do everything required of an OW diver so that when I hand them their card after dive five they never need to come back to me if they choose not to.

And that card certifies them in our eyes to dive to the SEI Sport Diving limit of 100 feet (30 meters).

So if I don't feel they can be a good buddy and assist that buddy, including me on those dives should I require it, I can't by standards even take them into open water.

Not to mention I like having that kind of time to get to know my students.

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Bob DBF]

(This post might sound angry, but it's not, really. It's just an honest observation from a student diver).

I completed my Open Water course (read my story "Open Water has been a disaster").

I learned a lot and being underwater is much, much less scary than it was when I began, but, I struggled considerably in this class, and I later found out that most of my classmates had various levels of experience in the water (a couple of lifeguards, a former member of a swim team, everyone else participated in various water sports for years).
My only experience was snorkeling, and even then, I have only been snorkeling for a very short time, and I'm a very "average" swimmer. I was comfortable in the water, but was dreading being underwater for 20 to 30 minutes (something I had NEVER done before).
I got the sense that the instructor didn't want to bore the experienced students and moved along quickly. I had to pay for extra one on one sessions (thus the course ended up costing me more money).
Last I checked, the only requirements for the course are being able to swim and tread on water. Shouldn't instructors realize that there will be students who are going to panic and that some skills aren't going to click right away?
Also, I feel the course should be a couple of weeks longer (this course was 6 weeks).
If I take advanced, I'll be looking into one on one, or at least enroll in a class that has 4 or less people.

Thoughts?

A lot of people get into diving to increase their time in the water and under the water which makes them a lot more at home in the water than folks without this background. Since you are already certified I would suggest checking out the swimming classes in your area and after that look for some basic free-diving instruction, which will teach you a lot about weight and buoyancy as well as breathing control. Spend some time in the water without the tanks and, as you find that at home feeling in the water, the scary feeling will be replaced by knowledge and ability.

Good Luck and Good Diving



Bob
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That's my point, people, by and large, are not taught that diving can be deadly, they are taught how safe it is, and they are not equipped with the skills, taught and trained to the level required to be useful in an emergency.

 

[bluejaykaren]

I would think that the majority of scuba students take the course because they love being in water and can't wait until they are able to spend 20 or 30 minutes underwater. It seems odd to me why someone who is so uncomfortable in the water and dreads being underwater would consider scuba to be a fun sport for them.
When my daughter took a summer camp scuba class there was a 12 year old girl that her parents made her take the class to get her over her fear of water. She couldn't even put her face in the water standing in the shallow end of the pool. Kudos to the dive shop who had an extra person come in just to spend the whole classes with just her. At the end of the week she was snorkeling in the deep end. But... if the class as a whole had to move at her pace then none of them would have gotten certified.
I admire the op for accomplishing his goal to be certified even with the difficulties faced but I think it us unfair to the instructors and other students to feel they should have slowed the class down beyond a reasonable expectation to be able to finish the class in the time allotted.

 

[Easdem]

As long as you convince SEI to lower the minimum pool time standard. Standards dictate 16 hours. And have them take out the rescue skills. And have them tell me that I can no longer do buddy breathing swims, no mask swims, the bailout drill, station breathing, and blacked out mask drills.
Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

Jim, when you say buddy breathing swim, do you mean shared air swimming? Or are you talking active 1 reg per buddy team?

Can you explain what the bailout drill is?

Also, what is the objective of the black out mask drill?

Thanks,

-Arturo