JasmineNeedsGills
Contributor
This thread is getting seriously interesting. I'd like to think some people at PADI, BSAC, CMAS et al are following this, because there's some very sensible suggestions and opinions flowing here.
Yep. It's difficult to ask people to give up a glorious day out on the Manacles or something to sit on the bottom of the municipal pool with a newbie. It can always be "sold" as way to build good instructor experience and develop yourself down that path, or appealing to peoples passion for their club, but yep... it's a difficult one.
I have no idea how ledgers work (guessing it's like how dive tables work?) but totally agree with the need to reduce theroy instructor workload. I work in IT, so the lack of E-learning resources with BSAC just screams out at me for modernisation. Despite this, I'm quite old fashioned myself and *like* having the books, so I wouldn't advocate for removing printed material entirely, but rather that it should be integrated with the digital platform for presenting some of the lectures, for self-testing, revision, formal assessment, with the book as a strong reference base that is easy to come back to as you progress. As you say, hopefully this could make it more appealing for commercial outdits to offer BSAC courses, and also hopefully make OD instruction more apealing to club instructors, if they didn't have to spent so much time doing dry theory.
There's no reason why we couldn't have a regional instructor do an intereactive livestream for some of the theroy material for, say, all the clubs in their region. This wouldn't be technologically difficult - there's cloud packages for this, so instructors and students could simply do it through a web portal on their own devices. This could be used for workshops as well, which would be a nice perk for retaining existing members.
BSAC have been making fairly big changes to their IT platforms of late though, so hopefully something like this isn't beyond the realms of possibility, provided they can keep up the momentum.
*nods* Yep the club culture can be great.... or absolutely toxic. When the rot starts to set in, you get those few who pitch in to do everything then you just get resentment and burn-out ("What's the point? No one else gives a ****"). One part of the basic induction really should be on ethos. "This is a club. We all volunteer because we love the sport. The club is only what you make of it, so get involved!"
I know it's dark but this literally made me laugh out loud. That was kind of on my mind when I wanted to get back in the water and was debating doing PADI OW... Always have a good Q card photo, it might be on the DAN website one day, right along with "Jasmin is believed to have stupided herself to death in ideal conditions at 6 metres, having just got her newest Underwater Unicorn Hunting speciality" (For the record, I failed.)
Absolutely. I got involved on the committee from the get-go. Partially to give something back, partially to get experience and insight, and partially because it's fun and a chance see more of the people I'm diving with and build friendships. Again, make the club diving ethos part of the basic training so people "get" how it works, particularly if they're coming in from a commercial organisation - you can't just rock up to the boat and expect everything to be done for you.
Our limiting factor is instructors. Getting people able to teach and willing to waste valuable diving holding the hand of some trainee is a problem.
Yep. It's difficult to ask people to give up a glorious day out on the Manacles or something to sit on the bottom of the municipal pool with a newbie. It can always be "sold" as way to build good instructor experience and develop yourself down that path, or appealing to peoples passion for their club, but yep... it's a difficult one.
This reminds me of a couple of things that an ideal agency would do to do with technological. First is to embrace e-learning and telepresence, next is to treat tables like double entry book keeping in paper ledgers.
I have no idea how ledgers work (guessing it's like how dive tables work?) but totally agree with the need to reduce theroy instructor workload. I work in IT, so the lack of E-learning resources with BSAC just screams out at me for modernisation. Despite this, I'm quite old fashioned myself and *like* having the books, so I wouldn't advocate for removing printed material entirely, but rather that it should be integrated with the digital platform for presenting some of the lectures, for self-testing, revision, formal assessment, with the book as a strong reference base that is easy to come back to as you progress. As you say, hopefully this could make it more appealing for commercial outdits to offer BSAC courses, and also hopefully make OD instruction more apealing to club instructors, if they didn't have to spent so much time doing dry theory.
There's no reason why we couldn't have a regional instructor do an intereactive livestream for some of the theroy material for, say, all the clubs in their region. This wouldn't be technologically difficult - there's cloud packages for this, so instructors and students could simply do it through a web portal on their own devices. This could be used for workshops as well, which would be a nice perk for retaining existing members.
BSAC have been making fairly big changes to their IT platforms of late though, so hopefully something like this isn't beyond the realms of possibility, provided they can keep up the momentum.
Yet with all that tryign to get people moved on through training (remember we can diver year round wind permitting.) We had a surplus of instructors but getting them to give up their time was near impossible. Indeed getting people to take their turn with compressor, and bar duty, assisting with boat maintenance and havign people prepared to tow was a constant challenge. It always came down to a few. SD and DL took far too long for most people (nepotism was alive and well though)
By 2018 after a series of unconnected events the club was on its knees and now has approx 10 diving members and has depleted all its reserves, with one of the biggest reasons being internal politics where lots of people (myself included) decided it was no longer fun nor enjoyable and go commercial, where diving is fun, and easy (no more washing boats) and you're no longer facing the constant bickering and backbiting on boats each week.
*nods* Yep the club culture can be great.... or absolutely toxic. When the rot starts to set in, you get those few who pitch in to do everything then you just get resentment and burn-out ("What's the point? No one else gives a ****"). One part of the basic induction really should be on ethos. "This is a club. We all volunteer because we love the sport. The club is only what you make of it, so get involved!"
Part of the reason picking up PADI AOW is attractive is they have a bit of plastic that says they are good to 30m, so the hand holding impact is not on the whole boat. (Do keep copies for the coroner though, just in case).
I know it's dark but this literally made me laugh out loud. That was kind of on my mind when I wanted to get back in the water and was debating doing PADI OW... Always have a good Q card photo, it might be on the DAN website one day, right along with "Jasmin is believed to have stupided herself to death in ideal conditions at 6 metres, having just got her newest Underwater Unicorn Hunting speciality" (For the record, I failed.)
Really though you want enthusiastic people, telling them to come back later is telling them to get lost. In the club environment it is important to keep the momentum with new people, get them involved and maybe doing instruction, being on the committee, running dives etc. They might not be as good at it as the old hands but they will only get that way by doing it.
Absolutely. I got involved on the committee from the get-go. Partially to give something back, partially to get experience and insight, and partially because it's fun and a chance see more of the people I'm diving with and build friendships. Again, make the club diving ethos part of the basic training so people "get" how it works, particularly if they're coming in from a commercial organisation - you can't just rock up to the boat and expect everything to be done for you.