Let The revolution Begin!

[diverbrian]

As a new diver.... I think you are on to something. A "good" something.

Lets see some price per sessions. I will likely be employing Neil to cover some of the very training sessions noted here. But I think that there are lots of divers out there.... that need just what is being talked about here. Perhaps it could be said that the courses may mirror some of the PADI courses..... but I think a differing logic applied to the courses is very appealing. Not geared to the mom and pop rec divers who just got certified for that trip to Hawaii. But rather for the rec diver who truly wants to learn more and further their diving skills. And touch the edge of tech diving.

As noted..... I paid $3500 for pilot training. Would I pay more for my diving skills to be furthered..... you betcha. And I think many others would as well.
I very much like the idea of training, with a tech diving edge to it. I also like the idea of the courses running "together". Same instructor's same mindsets, etc..

ALL the courses laid out and presented at the same time. Sign me up.

Sort of a DIR training.... without the elusiveness of said (never know where to go for training).

Sorry to pick here, but your statement leaves the best place for me to start some of my points.

There is the type of diver that people haven't considered. Myself and many of my buddies fit into that. I am hardly the "mom and pop" diver that is only interested in certifying to go South. In fact, I have only done a fraction of my dives in warm water. I did dive my first season wet in water that would be in the high 40's and low 50's and didn't care to spend the money on a drysuit until the fall winds went straight through my wetsuit and to my body.

Up here, all a "resort" course would do is to convince someone that (like Rachel) they never want to touch cold water. It took me time to figure out that I wanted to dive in the fall and winter enough to invest in a drysuit.

The LDS sells a Nitrox cert with OW (not as an add on option, we do our last day of OW diving on Nitrox). Until I started diving with people on this board, I didn't much, if any diving, with people who DIDN'T use nitrox.

But, I had to build my skills as needed. I didn't have someone telling me what I needed to learn. Because, I am with SSI, I had an Advanced Card without a <gasp> deep cert. I didn't go below 100 ft. until I went to Provo. I never had a reason to. Like Mike Ferrarra is fond of saying, it allowed me to develop my skills before I started diving deep routinely with my buddies out of my Adv. Nitrox course as buoyancy control shallow is far more difficult than it is deep (unless you count narcosis, LOL).

In short, I was one of the divers that the current system works for and I don't do "resort" diving. I had good instructors and they taught me enough to survive and to learn where to advance and what to work on when I was diving.

As to niche, I would say that another organization that Genesis doesn't care for has it covered when they open their OW course. And anybody that specializes in HIGH QUALITY courses is going to have the problems with instructor and class availability. Why? The only way to ENSURE beyond any reasonable doubt that your instructors won't be a black eye to your agency to keep the number down to a level to where they are hand-picked by your agency. This is one reason (I believe) that a certain agency has been slow to start their OW course. The minute that they go above 30 or 40 instructors worldwide, they run a huge risk of getting a bad instructor slip through their quality control. To them, this would be unacceptable.

Oh, and I know from military experience, that a bad instructor isn't always obvious. The most obnoxious person could be the person who teaches you the most as they FORCE you to learn it. The nicest person could be the worst one as they may not be as insistent that you learn or their info could be dead wrong. The student doesn't always know until the course is completed (in whatever topic) whether their instructor is full of it or a virtual God/Godess in their subject. Many times you can tell. Many times a more "abrasive" person will give the impression of being a poor instructor when they are actually excellent. Some of the people that I learned the most from in the military were the ones that I said "What a *&^#$$$@@!" about when they were teaching .

 

[MikeFerrara]

My expectations of such an agency would be to offer an alternative to what exists now. Many divers are getting exactly what they want but many aren't. the bad part is those that aren't don't know it til after the fact. They have to find out the hard way (or maybe here) just what it is they don't know and aren't being taught.

I would never want to compete with PADI for the portion of the market that is suited to their training. I can tell you that most people want a quick ticket to see the reefs and I don't even want them for students. That's a huge part of the reason I closed my shop. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do it. I'm saying that I'm not interested in being part of it.

GUE does offer an alternative. I don't think it's a perfect one though. While I have been very impressed with lots of what they do especially the three GUE instructors that I've seen teach there are a few aspects of GUE that will probably keep me and them apart and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I think there's room for another organization that can offer real quality training. As far as recreational diving there would be very little real competition. The question is how big is the market? Another question is how big does the market need to be. I would market such an agency as being totally different and my customers would be people looking for something completely different.

 

[wreckchick]

To Genesis:

I'm not trying to get a scuba diving license. The whole point was that the education and skills validation come from different places and are unrelated. I think that a student I teach that has to go before Mike F to get the card is getting a fair evaluation and should be confident that the skillset is in place.

I think that allowing people to move at their own pace and not feel pressured to keep up, and the instructors don't feel pressured to keep the class together so there is time for people to really master the skills.

Those are the areas where I think that flying has it right and diving needs some help. It's not about the card in the wallet that says "license" or "certification" or whatever.

R

 

[Genesis]

To Genesis:

I'm not trying to get a scuba diving license. The whole point was that the education and skills validation come from different places and are unrelated. I think that a student I teach that has to go before Mike F to get the card is getting a fair evaluation and should be confident that the skillset is in place.

I think that allowing people to move at their own pace and not feel pressured to keep up, and the instructors don't feel pressured to keep the class together so there is time for people to really master the skills.

Those are the areas where I think that flying has it right and diving needs some help. It's not about the card in the wallet that says "license" or "certification" or whatever.

R

Fair enough.

However, I think there are other ways to "prove" competence, other than separating instructor and certification. One of them is video evidence of certification, which I proposed in this thread.

With it, disputes are pretty easily settled - you either can or you cannot. As Yoda said, "there is no try."

It would also put the "fear of God" into instructors, in that insurance all requires standards to be met in order for it to be valid, and since the DVD is indelible evidence of the quality of the diver's ability (or lack thereof!) if there IS an incident out comes the evidence......

This would make it completely unpalatable for an instructor to "pass" someone who really should not - coupled with modularity, it would allow a student to "fire" an instructor who isn't cutting it for them and not lose what they've already invested. At worst they'd lose the current module they're in - the rest, of which they have passing evidence for, would be fully transferrable.

 

[GDI]

My expectations of such an agency would be to offer an alternative to what exists now. Many divers are getting exactly what they want but many aren't. the bad part is those that aren't don't know it til after the fact. They have to find out the hard way (or maybe here) just what it is they don't know and aren't being taught.

I would never want to compete with PADI for the portion of the market that is suited to their training. I can tell you that most people want a quick ticket to see the reefs and I don't even want them for students. That's a huge part of the reason I closed my shop. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do it. I'm saying that I'm not interested in being part of it.

GUE does offer an alternative. I don't think it's a perfect one though. While I have been very impressed with lots of what they do especially the three GUE instructors that I've seen teach there are a few aspects of GUE that will probably keep me and them apart and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I think there's room for another organization that can offer real quality training. As far as recreational diving there would be very little real competition. The question is how big is the market? Another question is how big does the market need to be. I would market such an agency as being totally different and my customers would be people looking for something completely different.

One of the threads suggested we would have a problem with ensuring the instructor standards were held accountable. This and it's only a suggestion would be to have the instructors approved by means of a panel of instructor trainers, assessment of their teaching abilities for QA. The same could be placed on the students who to complete their requirements would need to be seen by more than one instructor. Now there are some problems with this approach such as getting/finding another instructor to assess and logistics and administration but it might be a possibility
We would need to compete with PADI, SSI and NAUI but not on their terms or playing field, and not ever to let quality suffer........?Hmmmmm

 

[Genesis]

One of the threads suggested we would have a problem with ensuring the instructor standards were held accountable. This and it's only a suggestion would be to have the instructors approved by means of a panel of instructor trainers, assessment of their teaching abilities for QA. The same could be placed on the students who to complete their requirements would need to be seen by more than one instructor. Now there are some problems with this approach such as getting/finding another instructor to assess and logistics and administration but it might be a possibility
We would need to compete with PADI, SSI and NAUI but not on their terms or playing field, and not ever to let quality suffer........?Hmmmmm

Do you think that the implied threat of the "video evidence" being there for posterity if there was an incident (and the impact it would have on your insurance) is enough? Or is more needed?

This assumes that the actual measurable standards are tough enough to begin with, of course.

 

[airraider1]

Sounds to me like you are trying to solve a problem that really doesn't exist. Does someone REALLY need to have all these skills before they are allowed to enjoy the reefs. I know alot of you old salts that have all of this training and experience get frustrated with the new diver on the trip but c'mon. I've read a thousand posts by the very same people who are advocating this new agency that most instructors are as incompetent at teaching as they are at servicing regs. Diving is supposed to be FUN and SAFE!!! Most of the divers I know get their first taste of diving and they never stop learning or training. Why do you think so many people are involved in these very discussions. All of the skills you want to be taught in your OW class are those that take experience and a lot of practice to master. How many of you superstars could REALLY maintain neutral bouyancy when you first got certified? I can tell you this there wouldn't be many divers if they had to go in front of Mike F before being CERTIFIED to dive. But then again maybe that's what you want. I love this sport because it's fun and just like taking apart a reg it's REALLY NOT THAT HARD to do it right. Lighten up a little and let people enjoy. If you don't want to dive with new divers then don't. But I can assure you they don't want to get hurt any more than a pro. LIGHTEN UP A LITTLE FOLKS AND HAVE SOME FUN JUST BE SAFE.

 

[Genesis]

Believe me, until you obtain good buoyancy and trim, you don't know how easy - and fun - diving really is.

That this (plus "breathe continuously") is not the focus of the training is, IMHO, far north of silly.

 

[Chien]

Sounds to me like you are trying to solve a problem that really doesn't exist. Does someone REALLY need to have all these skills before they are allowed to enjoy the reefs. I know alot of you old salts that have all of this training and experience get frustrated with the new diver on the trip but c'mon. I've read a thousand posts by the very same people who are advocating this new agency that most instructors are as incompetent at teaching as they are at servicing regs. Diving is supposed to be FUN and SAFE!!! Most of the divers I know get their first taste of diving and they never stop learning or training. Why do you think so many people are involved in these very discussions. All of the skills you want to be taught in your OW class are those that take experience and a lot of practice to master. How many of you superstars could REALLY maintain neutral bouyancy when you first got certified? I can tell you this there wouldn't be many divers if they had to go in front of Mike F before being CERTIFIED to dive. But then again maybe that's what you want. I love this sport because it's fun and just like taking apart a reg it's REALLY NOT THAT HARD to do it right. Lighten up a little and let people enjoy. If you don't want to dive with new divers then don't. But I can assure you they don't want to get hurt any more than a pro. LIGHTEN UP A LITTLE FOLKS AND HAVE SOME FUN JUST BE SAFE.

I found my class to be very challenging but it was still fun. I'm not perfit yet but I'm learning more each time. I don't know of any instructor in any subject who loves what they are doing mind when someone new comes along. The fact is people really do like to be challenged, they like to test themselves. As long as the standards aren't unrealistic they, the instructors, can be demanding and still be fun. The more someone knows about any given topic the more they enjoy what that topic is all about.

 

[airraider1]

I couldn't agree more about bouyancy and trim. My point is merely that it takes some practice. Do I really need 10-12 dives to practice this simple skill with an instructor before I get certified? I'll ask again. Did you have all the skills you advocate for passing your OW class when you were certified? If not, was it really that important? Sure it would have been great to be proficient at EVERYTHING when I first got certified. The fact that I wasn't (I doubt you were either) didn't make me unsafe. I will continue to practice my skills and learn new ones for the rest of my life. I am not an instructor but I go with my LDS several times each year to the local quarry and buddy up with new divers running through their skills in their first OW dives. It keeps my skills sharp and I still learn from watching them make mistakes. I am sure I will never be the diver you are but I'm just not as serious about it as you. SAFETY IS SERIOUS and diving is fun. You can be safe and have fun with scuba long before you could pass your OW certification.