When are we gonna learn?

[MXGratefulDiver]

I have seen plenty of divers combined OW with AOW as one continuous course and finished in less than a wk.

Me too, and I've always had a problem with that. The usual rationalization is that more dives with an instructor are good. That would be a better argument if the issuance of the card didn't give some people the impression that they're somehow "qualified" to do dives like the one that resulted in the fatality this thread is talking about ... or those who go too deep too fast and end up killing themselves by running out of air.

My rule of thumb was that I wanted a student to do somewhere around 20 dives between OW and AOW, to get familiar and comfortable with the things they learned in that class before jumping into the next one. I did make some exceptions ... because we're all different and some students learn more quickly than others. But that would require an evaluation dive for me to see where they were at before I'd make the exception.

There is, among many instructors (particularly independents like I was), a difference in philosophy about when it's appropriate to begin AOW ... and why.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Jerome O'Neil]

I taught scuba for a dozen years, and I used to tell my students ... particularly OW students ... that a class doesn't teach you how to dive, it teaches you how to learn diving. The actual learning comes from repetition, and that takes real-world dives.

That is a very succinct statement of all I've been saying here. I also believe this is something most people intuitively get. "Experience is the best teacher."

I had three logged dives the day after I got my basic cert card, and easily a dozen after about a month. When my instructor called me and asked if I was interested in his AOW course I probably had 50 or so in the bag. Outside of navigation and some new dive sites, there wasn't anything in that course that was new for me. That's not bad, it's just about where and how people learn.

 

[boulderjohn]

"Experience is the best teacher."

I had some high school students who used to say, "Experience is a requirement; growth is optional."

I have used this example often before--I learned to ski primarily by watching others and imitating the things they were doing. By the time I had enough financial resources to afford lessons, I had so thoroughly ingrained those bad habits that I was never to fully get rid of them.

A few years ago I was diving with two friends in Mexico, and the DM we had that day, who had never seen us dive before, asked about taking us to a more advanced site on the next dive, a site more befitting our great experience. He was very surprised to learn that I had just certified my two friends the day before, and what he witnessed was their first dives after OW certification. He said he had assumed they had over 100 dives. I did AOW with them shortly after that, and then we did some more diving together. They looked just super.

Then there was a 2.5 year period in which they did a lot of diving in their local area. Those experience dives got them close to the 100 dives that first DM had assumed they had. After that we dived together in Bali for a couple of weeks. I was shocked by what I saw, by how badly their skills had deteriorated during that time. We will be diving again soon, and I am going to give them some instruction to try to gt them back on track.

 

[sunnyboy]

[QUOTE="boulderjohn, post: 7885679, member: 32540"... I did AOW with them shortly after that, and then we did some more diving together. They looked just super.

Then there was a 2.5 year period in which they did a lot of diving in their local area. Those experience dives got them close to the 100 dives that first DM had assumed they had. After that we dived together in Bali for a couple of weeks. I was shocked by what I saw, by how badly their skills had deteriorated during that time. We will be diving again soon, and I am going to give them some instruction to try to gt them back on track.[/QUOTE]

John, just curious. How had their skills degraded over the 2.5 years? Is there anything in particular they were doing / not doing, or was it just a case of complacency and short-cutting stuff? In the spirit of this thread, I'm wondering if they were getting shoddy on actual 'in water' dive skills, or just all-around sloppy.

 

[KevinNM]

It happens. I have been told about GUE divers who got a tech pass in fundamentals then didn't do their first tech class for a year without practicing the skills they learned. And had apprently forgotten things like how to swim in trim and perform skills neutrally buoyant when the tech instructor first sees them in the water. I'm told it makes for a very expensive version of the fundamentals course and at best a provisional in the tech course.

 

[Bennno]

I don't think it's an issue when people take AOWD right after OWD. Essentially they're just doing an extended OWD course... nothing wrong with that and they're not really qualified to do anything new after the course.
If anything, it's a plus for some people as they get to do more dives with an instructors that already knows them. I fail to see any downside in doing that.
There is not much to learn in AOWD, it's basically supervised diving and getting a few tipps.

It's an an issue when people take deco/overhead courses too early which that happens all the time and is even promoted by instructors on this board.

 

[Marie13]

I got certified in early October. I got 5 dives in before the local quarry closed for the season. I'm spending a lot of time in the pool working and just having underwater time. I'm off to Mermet this weekend. Hope to get 3 dives in. I'll be doing Advanced in the spring/early summer. I'm doing 4 SDI full specialties so I'll get my advanced card when they're done - uw nav, night, deep, wreck - in that order (the last 2 done on Lake Michigan, not the quarry). I'll probably have at least an additional 25 dives outside of class (likely more) by the time I'm done with Advanced.

I wouldn't have been comfortable going right into Advanced from OW. I definitely needed more underwater time between the two.

 

[boulderjohn]

John, just curious. How had their skills degraded over the 2.5 years? Is there anything in particular they were doing / not doing, or was it just a case of complacency and short-cutting stuff? In the spirit of this thread, I'm wondering if they were getting shoddy on actual 'in water' dive skills, or just all-around sloppy.

It was pretty much what KevinNM described. They lost buoyancy and trim. I was using a GoPro, and I videoed their fin tips whacking the bottom--including coral at times--so they could see it. That would have been unimaginable two years before.

 

[Kharon]

I do get tired of the rhetoric about how useless classes are ...

Don't think I ever said that classes are useless and I don't think they are. I am just convinced that they are an introduction to what you need to learn and do not develop fully the skills you need. I would imagine that some tec courses are far more rigerous (cave, trimix, etc.) and do prepair the diver pretty extensively.

What I object to is saying a diver is completely skilled after OW and is an advanced open water diver with 14 dives. That's a disservice to both the diver and the sport.

 

[kris@bulldogg.ca]

Don't think I ever said that classes are useless and I don't think they are. I am just convinced that they are an introduction to what you need to learn and do not develop fully the skills you need. I would imagine that some tec courses are far more rigerous (cave, trimix, etc.) and do prepair the diver pretty extensively.

What I object to is saying a diver is completely skilled after OW and is an advanced open water diver with 14 dives. That's a disservice to both the diver and the sport.

Are you suggesting that anyone is promoting that a diver with any number of dives is an "expert" after they complete the AOW certification with any agency?

Your argument is semantic, focused on what you consider an appropriate amount of experience to call a diver "advanced", because you either misunderstand or misrepresent the word.

Advance as a noun is forward movement, or as a verb in to move forward, typically in a purposeful way. As an adjective - ahead in development.
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I would suggest that any student who has taken the AOW cert has moved forward in a purposeful way their understanding, and experience diving, and has moved ahead in development from where they were when they certified as an OW diver.

No agency that I am aware of suggests that AOW certification is anything more than recognition that a OW diver has taken steps to continue learning and growing within the dive world, not that they are any form of an expert.

Lastly, and most importantly, knowledge and ability do not withstand time. Anyone who achieves skill in something, must continue to exercise that skill to maintain it. It is like paddling a canoe upstream. If you stop paddling, you don't stay where you are, you move backward. Therefore, to address this argument from another direction..... many divers with over 100, 200, or 500 dives would also not be considered "advanced" using your conceived definition of the word.