Ok Dudes and Dudettes...DIR-F

[weight_for_me]

Seahunter....well said. When I took my OW a year ago, we had about an hour in classroom and a followed by a couple hours in the pool. All of the basics were taught and taught well. I had a great Instructor. He gave me the knowlege and skills not just to be safe in the water, but also to advance my training at my own speed. I spent most of last summer concentrating on buoyancy, trim and being aware of what was going on around me. Sure, I had some wreck dives with the club (100'+), but was always buddied up with an advanced diver who knew not just my skill level, but knew who I was taught by and therefore was very comfortable being in the water with me. DIR is a concept which I have read a lot about and find interesting...but I'll pass until I have more experience.
Randy...

 

[Aquabella]

I just wanted to clarify something, as the person who started this thread. My asking about DIR was not because I was dissatisfied with the training I have received. On the contrary I do know that my instuctor is top notch and very well respected. Extremely knowledgable and experienced going out of his way for each student in a totally selfless way.

Being relatively new to the diving world, this is the first I had heard of GUE. I wasn't sure whether these courses were taken in addition to PADI(or other). I actually was planning going in and talking to my instructor about it. I agree that experience is #1 and I know he will tell me the same.

I know your post isn't necessarily aimed at me but I don't want there to be any misconceptions about my LDS. I do appreciate your comments and I hear you points.

 

[taz22]

Well....since I read this post, I'll toss in my $0.02!

I took a 4 week OW water course when I first started Scuba Diving and then progressed at my own pace through the AOW and Rescue Diver course ( Padi of course). Now I'm taking the Divemaster course which expands your diving knowledge and gives you more understanding of diving physics and everything else that goes along with starting out as a Dive Professional, yada yada yada!

My best advice is to work with an instructor you trust to build your knowledge of diving. You might want to spend this diving season getting all the diving experience you can and then take the Divemaster Course come the fall. My local LDS teaches the DM course only once a year and it starts in November and ends in May. Lot's of reading and pool play time til the water softens up a bit.

Remember, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take!!!

Cheers, Taz!

 

[jrtonkin]

I have to disagree with most of what seahunter said.

Disclaimer first: He's got 30+ years of teaching experience. I don't quite have 30 years of life experience, so the odds are that he's more correct than I am.

That said, I do believe that there is good and usefull information left out of beginning courses. Stuff that you shouldn't need to "take a specialty course" to be taught, but that would be very usefull to know.

I also believe that, if well managed, a longer course can be better than an equally-well-managed short course... There's simply more time (and the well-managed part means that it's not wasted time) to go over material. Either more thoroughly, or if the student has mastered the material, to cover more broadly.

I'll be happy to argue specific ideas and examples at (probably great) length, but course format and content isin't really the topic of this thread... Seahunter, shall we agree to disagree, or start a new thread?

Jamie

 

[seahunter]

I'm a firm believer in learning and experiencing as much as possible. Hopefully as you do that, you'll pick up skills and ideas that will serve you well. Most of the newer certification agencies offer further and very specialized training for already certified divers and I say go for it if it appeals to you.

I suppose I just get annoyed by some divers who fall in love with their instructor and/or agency. If they were as loyal to their life partner as they are to their scuba instructor/store/agency, there'd be a heck of a lot less divorce going on. If any single instructor was the best around, I'd know about him (we all would)! If any single agency was the best, that would be the only one in existence (see Certification Agency Poll in the General Scuba diving Section under Basic Scuba Discussions).

Once you've got your basic course from a professional instructor working for a solid recognized training agency, open your eyes and look around. There are so many options avaialble now to divers that we never had 50 years ago it's quite amazing. It's equally amazing that so many refuse to take a course from any one other than their basic course instructor. I encourage our divers to take every course with a different instructor. Whether you like him or not, each has ideas and approaches that are different. You choose which you like and throw the rest away.

 

[Groundhog246]

jrtonkin once bubbled...
That said, I do believe that there is good and usefull information left out of beginning courses. Stuff that you shouldn't need to "take a specialty course" to be taught, but that would be very usefull to know.

Not sure how much is left out of which courses, as I've only taken the courses I've taken and haven't sat in on others. But, I dive regularly with a buddy who wasn't taught how to read the markings on a tank, or even the VIP sticker on a tank. She was just told that they required an annual visual and hydro every 5 years. Maybe it's considered "unnecessary" to know, but if you don't know how to read the stampings/label, thus don’t know the max pressure and capacity of a cylinder (without asking someone), etc, then you put yourself and others at risk. I was at my local LDS last summer when someone from Toronto, showed up with rental tanks from a Toronto store that had no current VIP labels and thus they refused to fill them. She apparently hadn't learned about (she did have a PADI OW C-card) as she had to be shown what a label looked like before she understood what was missing. Now they MAY have been inspected, and quite likely safe to use, but they went out the door of an LDS without proper labeling, in the custody of a diver who either wasn't taught or forgot (based on my buddy above, I'd guess the former).
BTW, I won't name the store, but I will state it was not S2K.

 

[canuckdiver]

the DIR-F course does teach a level of certain skills (like bouyancy, fin kicks, gear streamlining) that MOST other courses do not attain.

That being said, I feel that this is more a function of the instructor than than the certifying agency. There are quite a few VERY good instructors in ontario that are not GUE affiliated, and they would be just as viable as alternatives.

 

[seahunter]

The situation you describe Groundhog is the result of a new diver with a very limited memory or an instructor who shouldn't be.
Every diver is supposed to learn about tank inspection intervals and how to read them.
A sloppy or unethical instructor is a menace to us all whether he teaches a 2 day course or a prolonged 12 week course.

I will add that I see damn few divers whether new or experienced check the hydro date and/or visual sticker on rental tanks before they leave S2K with them. I suppose I should consider it a compliment that they trust us but it does make me shake my head occasionally. It places us in an awkward position - should we remind them to check the integrity of the tanks we just rented them?

JR, don't accept my years of teaching experience as necessarily making me more correct. It's just more likely that I've made a lot more mistakes than someone else. Hopefully I've learned from each one - ergo, I've learned more than another, newer instructor. I firmly believe that an instructor learns more about teaching scuba AFTER the IDC than during it - assuming of cousre that his head hasn't grown too big during the IDC.
In fact, we actually agree on most things. I clearly said that there's lots of good things a new diver should learn. I stated however that he doesn't need to learn them in the basic 'Learn to Scuba Dive' course. He should concentrate on developing instinctive, basic skills and gaining some experience in controlled
diving situations. Then he can learn all the other stuff that is interesting or useful. To crowd his mind with that "interesting and useful 'other' stuff" before he has learned basic concepts and developed basic skills is the mistake often made by well-meaning instructors. This is a simple and well-known educational methodology principle applied in dozens of other even more complex training programs like pilot training, law enforcement, racing, etc.
This is a favorite topic of discussion for me and very easy to defend. We can certainly open a new thread and perhaps should so others can share their ideas too. How about suggesting topics that you think ought to be in the new diver course and I'll either agree or debate why they shouldn't be there?

 

[Groundhog246]

seahunter once bubbled...
The situation you describe Groundhog is the result of a new diver with a very limited memory or an instructor who shouldn't be.
Every diver is supposed to learn about tank inspection intervals and how to read them.
A sloppy or unethical instructor is a menace to us all whether he teaches a 2 day course or a prolonged 12 week course.

Since I know what her job entails, I will rule out limited memory. And she can decribe in detail every dive we've done together, without once referring to her log book, something I can't do and she logged about 60 dives last year. If she says she wasn't taught, she wasn't. Sloppy instructor? Probably. But actually 2 different instructors at different shops. First go round she caught a cold and couldn't complete her OW certifying dives and the shop was unwilling to make arrangments to complete, sorry bout your luck. Shopped around and found another instructor who ran her through the class work, a pool checkout dive and her OW dives.

 

[seahunter]

"A sloppy or unethical instructor or dive store is a menace to us all.."

Besides the obvious inclusion of below standards teaching, I also consider any behavior by a member of the scuba industry that detracts from scuba diving or impairs a divers ability to grow in the sport as unethical behaviour as well.

Many divers who've faced similar challenges are referred to S2K. While not responsible for others actions, we apologize to those divers for their treatment by other members of the scuba industry and then set about making amends and getting them on their way to their goal in scuba.