PADI's Course Rush

[TMHeimer]

I took Rescue in '06. I believe at the time you needed 20 logged dives either to start (I think) or by the time you finished. When did they change that? Now I believe you only need OW cert.? I started mine with 26 dives. Had I gotten a few more I think I would've benefitted more from Rescue. However, I've also always felt it's not a great idea for 2 new divers to buddy up when neither has any rescue training. Six in one....

 

[Thalassamania]

Can you do it under PADI (or for that matter NAUI) standards ... sure. Should you? I'd say yes. The race to the bottom in terms of hour of training has left us with many poorly trained divers and a very high drop out rate. Combining several courses into a single program may be a way to kill two birds with one stone. Working with a quality instructor there could be expanded time to do the required skills repeated times, and get beyond the inadequate, "OK, do it once and then let's move on," that seems to be the light-motif of so much of diver training these days. By stacking together a series of courses you may actually be able to train the sorts of divers that were common back when the standards of all the agencies required about 40 hours of training.

So with PADI, a diver can complete his/her Open Water, then Advanced OW, and then Rescue Course back-to-back-to-back, with no dives in between.

How does everyone feel about this method? I assume there is some controversy.

But the big question is: "does it actually work?" Do you train a better diver in such a program than you might if there are a number of non-training dives made between the classes? At first blush I'd have to say yes. I run a program that is an "enhanced" equivalent to NAUI O/W, NAUI Rescue, and NAUI Master Diver, with a buoyancy program, surf training, boat diving, navigation, naturalist, EAN, first aid, CPR and oxygen administration thrown in. My concern is in what I am referring to with the word "enhanced." You see, it is not just a matter of stacking a bunch of courses end-to-end, we throw everything into a hopper and then reorder and rearrange them, adding additional material where appropriate. We create a very different program that covers all the pieces of the courses listed above. As a trivial example, we teach all the kicks and maneuvering, flutter, dolphin, back, helicopter, banked turns, surface divers (kelp and pike) early in the course, as part of the same topic, had we been "staking" courses some of these would happen in the beginning and others toward the end. Similarly we have confined water session that move along in skill development right to the end, in most recreational courses confined water time is real money, so there is significant incentive to reduce it to a bare minimum.

With me, I think it's a flawed methodology that creates overconfident divers without proper diving control. By doing all these courses, it makes people think that their skills are advanced more than they actually are. You can have divers with Rescue certification with only 12 dives.

I don't see the problem there, the minimum number of dives that our trainees have is 12, and I'd trust any of them (way before I'd trust any so-called "Rescue Diver") to properly recover an unconscious victim from the bottom, correctly surface the victim, and strip, breathe and transport while breathing (as required and appropriate).

It's also a lot of information overload, where divers may forget some skills learned because of lack of time to practice the skills before forgetting. Plus, I think there are a lot of lessons that are learned based purely on experience. For example, with Peak Performance Buoyancy, a lot of it is based upon practice versus a course, yet some people think their buoyancy is perfect just because of that course. I prefer the SSI method that requires a certain number of dives before the advanced course.

I don't see that it much matter what people "think" their trim and buoyancy is like, what matters is simply what is is like. If the combined course provides the time and teachable moments that people come out doing it competently and naturally, what is the issue? If it doesn't ... that'll be rather obvious, no?

I ran into a very experienced diver that said she used to feel the same way. Now, she approves of the consecutive courses because she feels that the lessons learned within are necessary for all divers to know. I'll reiterate my point of "information overload", where the diver just learned so much but has no opportunity to practice and remember all of it. Although all the lessons are important, there needs to be time to apply the lessons.

In my case, I did my AOW at around 15 dives (i.e., signed up nearly right after), but I wanted to be decently experienced before I did the Rescue. Now I'm doing the Rescue with nearly 100 dives.

Maybe there is an issue with information "overload," but I don't see that ... it's not rocket science and it doesn't take a huge amount of memory to store the information that must be learned.

...

People won't come out of a Peak Performance Buoyancy class thinking they're buoyancy gurus, if the challenges that are set in the class are enough to show them they aren't. It really comes down to how the instructor teaches the class.

Even if the instructor tells them they're perfect, when it comes to buoyancy and trim, that is a clear and objective item that you can't fake or be deceived about.

My impression is that it's a consequence of PADI catering to the typical vacation diver. A lot of divers out there go on a 1-3 week vacation and want to be able to do one or more courses in a constrained period of time. It doesn't seem to be focused on what produces the most competent divers, but rather what brings in the students. Moreover, the more I dive locally and on vacation, the more I've really begun to notice how different an activity diving is and how different divers are based on location and conditions. The pacific northwest is quite different from a midwestern quarry is quite different from a tropical Caribbean reef dive. The common case is the warm water vacation diver and the system is by and large most geared towards that crowd and that type of diving.

It may also be a way to deal with the "problem" of the resort only diver. The industry does not seem to be willing to come up with a mechanism to certify resort divers who will always be accompanied by leadership personnel. I imagine it is because they don't want to embarrass them by creating a situation that even implies that they are not "real" divers. What an excellent solution to come up with a problem that assure they will learn a lot more and be better prepared next time they arrive and at the same time assure that they are very closely supervised.

I don't see a problem with it - several other agencies include the same skill-sets within their entry-level programs. PADI just offer a modular system.

The only problem I see is with the modular system itself getting in the way and not permitting the sorts of reordering I talked about earlier.

Reading all the comments, I guess the method makes sense. Instill good habits before potentially getting bad habits. It always just seemed weird to me that you could potentially consider yourself a "rescue diver" with under 15 dives, ...

Why is that? People at that level are quite capable of learning the required skills.

But like Jim Lapenta mentioned, some people might just not have good habits from the first course, and adding on more skills might have negative consequences. I guess the major problem then is the leniency some instructors have in letting people pass without the adequate skill level (obviously different per instructor). Maybe there should be some sort of pool pre-test before the advanced course.

Maybe there should be some sort of inspection to determine the competence of instructors, but that is another issue. Are you suggesting that competent instructors should not be permitted to stack courses in the fashion because incompetent instructors might just do a worse job than they are already doing? Might I, respectfully, submit that there are better and more efficacious answers to that problem?

AOW is an advancement of the OW course. It isn't 'advanced' scuba diving, it is 'advanced' open-water (level) diving. There's world of difference between those.

I mostly just did my AOW just so that I could go to 100fsw without dive boats/shops protesting, but I did learn a lot. If anything, I'd change the name from Advanced OW to OW Level 2.

It used to be called something like that, for both PADI and NAUI. PADI changed their O/W II course to "Advanced Open Water" and dropped their "Advanced Diver" as a marketing ploy against NAUI. The patter was something on the line of, "Have you got your 'Advanced" yet, here at PADI it's easy and fun." Neglecting to tell the student that "Advanced Open Water" and "Advanced Diver" were not the same thing. NAUI followed suit, in what I feel was an idiotic rush to the bottom, and that's the way it has been, ever since.

 

[TSandM]

Even if the instructor tells them they're perfect, when it comes to buoyancy and trim, that is a clear and objective item that you can't fake or be deceived about.

Oh, I disagree. What you see as a goal for buoyancy and trim depends on what you SEE, and what you are taught is the objective. I watched a pair of friends get their wetnotes out to have a conversation one day . . . they went up about ten feet while they were doing it. They were unperturbed. I would have been humiliated.

If the students are doing as well as the instructor, they're likely to think they're doing fine. My instructors threw challenges at me that I couldn't meet, so I would continue to understand that I could do better.

Five years ago, I watched a video of Andrew Georgitsis doing a wreck dive in the Red Sea. At the end of the video, he's sitting next to a wall, and he pulls out his wetnotes to record the dive. He doesn't move. He doesn't go up or down or kick. At the same time, I read the standards for Tech 2 with GUE, which include being able to perform all skills within an 18 inch window. I thought it was ridiculous! Now I hold myself to that standard, and sometimes I reach it. But the only reason I can do that is because I have SEEN that standard.

 

[Thalassamania]

I don't know what you're disagreeing with, we see eye to eye on B&T. What you're talking about is perception and listening to what the instructor says, and what I'm saying it that real B&T is clear and objective (in the sense of write it down and measure it), e.g., 18 inch window, and eventually the truth will out, just as it did for you. Sorry if I was unclear.

 

[DevonDiver]

The race to the bottom in terms of hour of training has left us with many poorly trained divers and a very high drop out rate.

I agree 100%.

Mostly because of a common, but often, total preoccupation with the concept that AOW "allows you to dive deeper". It doesn't.

OW + AOW... with a good instructor... allows you to be a barely competent, independent and self-reliant diver. Doing the 'deep dive' might expand your overall comfort zone, but there's nothing in that dive's skill-set that really prepares a diver to increase their depth range.

The reality is that the wider dive industry, not the agency, encourage that misinformation... by typically using AOW as the 'benchmark' for whether a diver is 'permitted' to exceed 18m/60' depth. In doing so, they pay no heed to the divers' actual competency and comfort in the water, nor their experience, nor the specific quality of their training.

Combining several courses into a single program may be a way to kill two birds with one stone. ... By stacking together a series of courses you may actually be able to train the sorts of divers that were common back when the standards of all the agencies required about 40 hours of training.

Absolutely - and I feel that this is closer to what the course structure was originally envisioned to run like. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but I don't think PADI et al would have cynically split their courses with the sole intention of gleaning profits from students. Modularity adds an element of flexibility... and that flexibility has proven desirable to divers who only have the option of conducting limited diving when on vacation...and also staggering their investment in training over a wider period. The downside is that any 'staggering' of courses tends to limit the continuity of development gained, especially when different instructors are used.

it is not just a matter of stacking a bunch of courses end-to-end, we throw everything into a hopper and then reorder and rearrange them, adding additional material where appropriate. We create a very different program that covers all the pieces of the courses listed above.

When I have the 'luxury' of meeting a student willing to put a higher level of commitment into their core, entry-level, training I do a similar thing. It's a pleasure to teach and the results are far superior.

Sadly, there's so little emphasis on being 'a good diver' that most students don't have that commitment to training. They do piece-meal courses, with no structure for development, and aren't discerning about the quality of instructor they employ. The end-result being retarded overall development, disappointing results from courses... and an increasing cynicism about the core value of training. And, of course, a lot of cynicism about the agency concerned.

Does that agency deserve cynicism? Well, they do permit this situation to happen. They do create these 'buy-the-book' instructors (pun intended). They don't provide responsible guidance to the dive community on how training can or should work... or the results that students should expect. There's no universal 'benchmark' for overall student ability at progressive levels of training. But ultimately... it's the student who gets to set their goals, decide who they train with, decide on the route for progression etc....

Maybe there is an issue with information "overload," but I don't see that ... it's not rocket science and it doesn't take a huge amount of memory to store the information that must be learned.

In many cases, I don't see a cause for 'information overload' at all. What's needed is more competence with the basics, not more skills.

Practice one skill one hundred times... not one hundred skills practiced once.

Even if the instructor tells them they're perfect, when it comes to buoyancy and trim, that is a clear and objective item that you can't fake or be deceived about.

I think this is one positive benefit that programs like 'Fundies' is (re-)teaching the dive community. The need to benchmark development against a more specific set of performance criteria at staged levels of development.

Of course, introducing such specific performance 'benchmarks' to the training development provided by larger agencies may expose certain deficiencies on behalf of the training providers themselves. That'd be humiliating for some.

Maybe there should be some sort of inspection to determine the competence of instructors, but that is another issue. Are you suggesting that competent instructors should not be permitted to stack courses in the fashion because incompetent instructors might just do a worse job than they are already doing? Might I, respectfully, submit that there are better and more efficacious answers to that problem?

I think the size of an agency ultimately determines their approach to instructor quality. Sad, but true. When an agency reaches a size where personal inspection of a bulk instructor pool becomes a logistical impossibility, the only recourse is to apply rigid and inflexible standards. Those standards ultimately have to reflect the lowest common denominator.

You end up with a system that stifles the good instructors, in pursuit of damage limitation control of the weaker ones.

 

[TSandM]

Thal, all I was saying is that "objective" depends on the instrument you are using to measure. If you parse buoyancy in ten foot increments, you can think you're doing great, whereas someone who is trying to stay within a 18 inch window may think your skills are rather crude. What your instructor uses to evaluate you, and teach you to evaluate yourself, can affect your perception of how well you are doing. If the instructor himself can't stay within a 3' window while clearing his mask, he's unlikely to expect you to do it.

 

[DevonDiver]

From what I've seen, a great majority of 'main-stream' instructors don't apply any specific standards or benchmark to buoyancy control.. not 18"... not 10'. They get students to swim through a few hoops (literally) and pat them on the back..."great fun huh?".

 

[Colliam7]

The race to the bottom in terms of hour of training has left us with many poorly trained divers and a very high drop out rate.

. . . because those OW divers who might have kept diving and taking courses and buying gear are not coming back. They don't feel qualified to continue diving on their own. So they don't.

This theme periodically appears as part of threads related to training. The implication is, a number of divers drop out of the sport because they don’t feel sufficiently comfortable in the water after certification, because of the inadequacy of training they received. The premise is intuitively appealing (to me, at least). But, I struggle with whether I am merely fooling myself. And, I simply can’t find data that supports or refutes the premise. (I also realize that this issue is discussed in other threads, so maybe I am guility of malignant rehashing. But, it is very much on my mind at the moment.)

If more stringent / rigorous / higher / whatever training standards were applied at the OW level, would the only difference in outcome be that fewer divers would start training or be certified to begin with? Will a certain percentage of divers pursue initial training, and then decide the sport is simply not for them, even though they were thoroughly trained? And, if that is the case, does it make more sense to have someone spend 100 hours in instruction, only to drop out, vs 48 (or, pick a lower number, if you wish)? And, some instructors, like Jim, probably do have data - on their particular experience. But, do ‘serious’ students ‘self-select’ when choosing an instructor, or type of program? If someone decides to pursue the Scientific Diver curriculum at a university, my impression is that they are genuinely serious about diving (not just dive training) and are less likely to drop out, except for medical reasons, or insurmountable personal obstacles.

In contrast, if we randomly pick 100 students who pursued open water training through PADI, NAUI, SSI, how many of them would have elected instead to pursue a 100 hour scientific diver program (or an equivalent course, titled comprehensive diver training), associated with a considerably greater investment of time and money? I am not trying to imply an opinion here, I honestly do not know the answer. For the most part, someone serious enough to spend the time and money in a more involved program is more likely to be serious enough to continue diving. In those cases, diving was the goal, not (just) dive certification. They end up being 'thoroughly trained', but the reason they stay in diving is not the training, it is the initial motivation that led them to pursue training.

Therefore, does it make more sense to provide a low cost (time and money) option for more people to start with - high throughput training? My LDS is currently in the middle of a ‘mega-DSD’ program, in which we teamed up with an email marketing organization, to provide Discover Scuba Diving opportunities at essentially half the usual price. Let’s say that 400 people buy a DSD coupon. Because of scheduling, interest, etc., let’s also say that only 200 (50%) people actually redeem that coupon – it is relatively inexpensive and if someone decides not to redeem it they haven’t lost much (I am just picking numbers at random here, we don't have data yet). Of the 200 people who get in the water, 25 of them decide to pursue Open Water training. We have given 175 people a chance to find out, for a relatively small investment, that diving may not be for them. Frankly, I would rather have them make the decision not to proceed at the DSD level, than at the OW level. While the economics may not be appealing to training organizations (agencies, and LDS operators, and LDS instrucotrs, for that matter) who want more OW certifications, it may be best for the consumer. And, the ‘drop out’ rate actually makes sense, because I am not convinced that everyone who pursues OW training actually knows what they are getting into, or are really interested in diving. Rather, many do something because a friend convinced them to, or because they are in a resort area and a resort OW course is readily available, and inexpensive, or because they are part of a Boy Scout troop that has set a goal to have ‘X’ number of scouts obtain a scuba diving merit badge, or ... If there is an inevitable drop out rate, is it better to screen the drop-outs early? Will providing more comprehensive training appreciably change that rate? Again, I don't know the answer.

I had an email exchange the other day with the president of a membership-based diving group that maintains three quarries in NC. The discussion involved an increase in annual dues, and its potential effect on membership renewals. He made the comment that a high turnover rate in membership was expected because that is the way it is in diving – people (for whatever reason) decide they want to learn to dive, finish OW, maybe finish AOW and then over time stop diving. They join the organization to facilitate their training, then don't renew when they stop diving. Now, is that because:

They really weren’t serious about diving to begin with?
‘Life got in the way’.
‘Diving is not what it is cracked up to be (quarries don't have warm water, colorful reefs, lots of pretty fish, genuine shipwrecks).’’
‘I don’t feel confident enough with my skills to continue to dive.’
‘I simply can’t allocate the money to diving that would be required. ‘
‘I simply can’t allocate the time to diving that would be required.‘

Certainly, one alternative position was summarized earlier in this thread as well.

Many of these divers do a few dives, find out it takes up too much of their time for one reason or the other, like no dive spots nearby which entails a plane flight, hotel costs, etc. or it may become too expensive.

Add to that the fact that, for many, diving is a social activity, and if you don’t find the right social group to dive with, you may not continue diving.

I also think that there are different teaching / learning models - Group class vs individual / private, large class vs small class – and we (too) often shoehorn a small-class learner into a large class training model. It is less expensive. Is the small class learner a) more likely to drop out after certification because they don't learn what they need to learn in the large class environment, or b) more likely to not pursue training to begin with because of the greater expoense (compared to the group lesson) of the small class / private option?

To the OP’s point, individually, because I do not think that the entry-level OW course, as taught in a group environment on a fixed schedule, necessarily affords enough time to provide the level of training that I would like for new divers to have, I see no problem at all with them pursuing AOW right after OW. (I do not have an issue with the nomenclature (‘advanced&#8217, or at least I don’t think it is worth arguing about.) But, if I have the chance to work with a diver in OW, then again shortly afterward in AOW, I feel more comfortable with the product, if for no other reason that the amount of contact time I have with them.

 

[RonFrank]

Is Rescue the type of class where a new diver can learn and retain all the new info after just completing OW and AOW back to back?

Can a new diver focus on the rescue scenarios when they don't have the basic skills of buoyancy and depth stability under control?

If a new diver is dealing with run away ascents or the inability to maintain buoyancy are they capable of also dealing with the buoyancy of a unconscious second diver as well?

Rescue at 20 dives was a stretch. Rescue at zero unsupervised dives is a joke. Assuming the student has the diving ability to handle the buoyancy issues of both themselves and a second diver are they in a state of information overload? This class had minimal classroom and pool time to begin with. Two 2-3 hour sessions which was both classroom and pool.

It's easy for a bunch of seasoned veterans to sit around and speculate about what the new diver can or can not do. More difficult when the new diver can't deal with their own issues and are being asked to handle rescue situations. I don't think there is enough class time allotted for the super instructors to fix the problems of a new diver with zero unsupervised dives who can not maintain their own buoyancy, or clear their mask without issue, or keep an eye on their buddy much less rescue someone in trouble.

I felt Rescue with 20 dives was iffy. It was about as dumbed down as you can make it, and that is assuming the new divers are well above average. Rescue with 7 dives is a joke. What is the thinking behind this move other than $$$ in a poor economy? Is the diver who has 75 dives and a year under their belt going to make a better Rescue student compared to the diver with 7 dives? Absolutely. Who would you want in charge of your Rescue a newbie or a seasoned diver? What's next, a DM with zero unsupervised dives? Why the Rush?

The Ultimate Rescue Diver is…
someone who can handle just about any aspect of a diving related emergency. They are THE PERSON we all want on the scene and they are THE PERSON who possesses the necessary knowledge and skills. This program is designed to prepare you to manage and control the many difficulties and challenges faced during a diving emergency.

Does that describe your sub 20 dive newbie?

 

[Peter Guy]

Colliam -- Thank you for a well thought out post. I KNOW it is "well thought out" because it is what I think!

In my pitifully small sample of Open Water Divers that I have taught, I know that the vast majority of them have done a few Warm Water Dives, checked it off their list and moved on. Even the ones who went out and bought their gear and have dome some local diving don't do that much. A very few, even of the ones who have done some of the "advanced" classes with me are what I would call truly active divers.

I don't think it is the quality of the instruction (although that may make a marginal difference) but, to the contrary, the quality of our lives. People just have a lot to do and we can only do so much.

For me, for example, the skiing industry would say they've lost me since I just don't ski any more -- primarily because I AM an active diver. We pick and choose and thank goodness we can.