Teaching Question

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is this padi? if so, how are you going to teach buoyancy in confined water when the 1st skills are done in water in which they can stand up?

There is nothing in the padi instructor manual that says students are to know buoyancy control for dsd/intro diving. In fact, inflate/deflate bcd is for an intro/dsd pool session and is not required for a intro dive in confined open water. most of the time the instructor is controlling buoyancy for intro divers. With dsd in open water, using a decent line the max depth is 6ft and only 1:1 ratio
 
@Skunky

Will not be with PADI.
oh, ok. i’m checking with my course director but i think you can get away with this by doing an “excursion dive”. Padi of course

IMG_3131.jpeg
 
@boulderjohn

I agree with teaching students skills while neutrally buoyant. I believe I stated this in the initial post.

My goal for conducting Discover/Try dives is to give people the experience/sensation of breathing under water. I feel this is a big hurdle for some people. I understand and am aware of what the standards are.

I do not believe a 2-3 hour Discover/Try dive is an ample amount of time to fully comprehend and get comfortable with buoyancy. An hour to an hour and a half on the surface with an hour to an hour and a half in the water.

I agree that buoyancy should be introduced and practiced. My question was should the focus be on this or just giving the student a feel for being underwater and to see if they want to move forward.
I agree. It's been a long time since I took the DSD part of the DM course, but I recall there aren't a lot of skills taught and not a lot of time teaching them. Doing them neutrally adds another task that will take time to get into decent shape. I know many with more certifications
& experience than me say doing the appropriate skills neutrally is actually easier than on the bottom. I probably will go to my deathbed not believing that for some reason.
 
Everyone needs to watch this:


Good video.

I am curious to the amount of time that was spent to get the students to that point.

I appreciate the resources you have provided. I will need to rethink how to conduct DSD/Try Dives with an emphasis on teaching neutral buoyancy. A little more time will have to be invested as well as what the cost of the course will be.
 
Good video.

I am curious to the amount of time that was spent to get the students to that point.

I appreciate the resources you have provided. I will need to rethink how to conduct DSD/Try Dives with an emphasis on teaching neutral buoyancy. A little more time will have to be invested as well as what the cost of the course will be.
If your students are comfortable and trust you, it is very quick. After the float and swim, I would get my students NB/T (okay 15 degrees or so) as the next step in CW1 before any skills.

If the participants don't know any better, it is easier. If you want to talk via WhatsApp or something as we are in different parts of the world, let's coordinate a time to chat
 
I am the principle author of the 2011 PADI article on teaching students while neutrally buoyant. I formed a group of other such professionals to share ideas and experiences, and then they gave comments on my drafts.

Before I started, I experimented with it on my own for a year or two. One of the places I experimented was with discover Scuba classes. That is where I discovered something that you evidently don't know yet: It is easier for students to learn basic skills while neutral and horizontal than it is while they are on the knees.

I had them lying face forward on the pool floor, fin tips and maybe knees lightly touching the floor. It is important that they are close to horizontal--not a 45° angle. All the beginning skills are easier for them then. You can have the same size classes--no need to cut down on the number of students.

My discover scuba classes were all pool only, and I made buoyancy a focus because the goal was to have them have fun and want to come in for full certification. It was this work in Discover Scuba that truly made me focus on neutral buoyancy for regular classes, because after a short Discover Scuba session, those students looked more like seasoned divers than the OW students I was teaching on the knees.
I can confirm that kneeling is difficult, keeping that position is unnatural and it already absorbs part of the student's attention.
It is much easier teaching skills such as mask evacuation, buddy breathing, etc. while laying flat on the bottom or while swimming horizontally (the latter is how I always thaught buddy breathing from a single reg).
What I consider difficult is to have them staying still midwater in perfect buoyancy and trim control.
This is hard to get in 20 minutes, during their first experience with a scuba tank...
Regarding equipment I was alemways of the idea to add it one piece at once. starting from NOTHING.
In a complete OW course I start with no mask and fins, with a couple of basic exercises: frog swimming underwater for at keast 15 m, with eyes open and using properly arms and legs. And diving to 3-4m depth recovering 5 objects from the bottom, with just one breath at each emersion.
Only after these two exercises are completed I give them fins, mask and snorkel. I teach finning in various styles and body attitudes, including staying afloat while severely overweighted. To evacuate the mask (laying flat on the bottom or while swimming horizontally midwater).
How to reinsert the snorkel in mouth and evacuate it while keeping the face in water. How to breath from the snorkel without mask. Etc.
At the third step I give them a tank with no BCD and a single reg, and, after proper weighting, how to modify buoyancy using their lungs.
At this point I introduce the old-style breathing control (slow, complete exhalation, followed by inhalation up to 70% of vital capacity, followed by a 5 s inspiratory pause).
And finally I add, one by one, all the remaining stuff: BCD, secondary regulator, SPG, depth meter, timer, computer, suit.
Of course it is not possible to proceed so gradually in a two-days weekend.
I managed to compkete this OW program typically in two weeks, working with students every day in the pool (the first week) and in the sea (the second week, for a total of 6 true sea dives).
When working at Maldives, where there was no pool and many guests did stay just a week, we managed to shorten the course, calling it a "tropical open water".
Removing the suit and using smaller tanks, so no weights were required.
And shortening the part with no mask and fins.
But it was clear that with a course of just one week in favourable conditions the student becomes just a tropical diver, he is not ready for colder water with lower visibility.
I never approved the short OW course completed in just 2 days, which I see being promoted by shops.
I also consider quite unethical that diving courses are organised by shops, as a way of selling equipment.
But I accept that my ideas are considered too conservative and "old style" by instructors younger than me...
Back to topic: for me people partecipating to these "discover scuba" experiences are NOT students.
They pay for testing a new experience, not for being thaught.
We should provide them with an easy and satisfiying experience. The tasks proposed to them should more games than exercises, the goal is not to prepare autonomous divers, but to make them to want to become such.
So minimal, simple equipment, very little explanations, just what is required for employing such a minimal setup.
In this case "less is better"...
As said I used to propose this experience for free. I understand that a luxury resort is a different situation than a pool in town, where it is not possible to provide this experience for free.
But transforming it in a "course" is something which makes it much less appealing for many people: in many working environments "courses" are mandatory activities periodically forced on employees, who hate them...
So I would promote this as a leisure experience, not as a course...
Something as a session in a thermal SPA, with body massage included...
But, again, I fully understand that my ideas cannot be accepted by many other instructors. Still I hope you find them stimulating for the discussion...
 
Everyone needs to watch this:

Nah,

Just get 'em to hang on a line and kneel. Why teach more when you can just crank them through doing the minimum? </sarcasm>
 
Good video.

I am curious to the amount of time that was spent to get the students to that point.

I appreciate the resources you have provided. I will need to rethink how to conduct DSD/Try Dives with an emphasis on teaching neutral buoyancy. A little more time will have to be invested as well as what the cost of the course will be.

You can do a DSD in 3 hours and teach NB/T. When you start out with that way, it really doesn't take that long to get there.

In my experience, the other major advantage of teaching this way is that your students almost instantly feel comfortable in the water, and are much more likely to come back for other classes.

Having taught students kneeling and in NB/T, I'd say the retention rate for kneeling students was about 10-15%. NB/T is much higher. 50-85% would be my guess.
 

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