Dive training standards

There have been several threads over the several months that indicate that training standards for scuba diving need to be raised or tightened up.

As I see it there are three participants to dive training

1--The person that wants to learn scuba

2--The agencies that set the current training standards

3--The instructors that represent the agencies in conducting the the training.

Current thinking seems to be that the agencies are financially driven to produce as many divers as possible as quickly as possible, therefore standards are low.

Coupled with that seems to be the idea that the instructor bears full responsibility for the training of the diver.

Compounding this is a clientle that only wants the briefest and easiest class to get them in the water.

How in the world do we fix this??

A simple example of standards is the swimming evaluation(see the thread-should non swimmers be allowed to dive). Picture what would happen if the standard for all agencies was the perspective dive student must first demonstrate the ability to swim 200 meters non stop with proficiency. How many people would be diving now?

Ascent skills standard. Ascend in a horizontal position at no more than 30 feet per minute making motionless unsupported stops at 10 foot intervals.

Descent skills standard. Descend ina horizontal position at no more than 50 feet per minute making motionless unsupported stops every 10 feet.

Be able to perform while hovering and then ascending buddy breathing and other air sharing techniques while making a proper ascent without having a mask on.

These are just some examples--raising the standards would need to be more comprehensive IMHO.

How long would it take the perspective diver to learn and master these standards? What would it cost to teach these courses? How many checkout dives would it take?

jbd once bubbled...
There have been several threads over the several months that indicate that training standards for scuba diving need to be raised or tightened up.

As I see it there are three participants to dive training

1--The person that wants to learn scuba

2--The agencies that set the current training standards

3--The instructors that represent the agencies in conducting the the training.

Current thinking seems to be that the agencies are financially driven to produce as many divers as possible as quickly as possible, therefore standards are low.

Coupled with that seems to be the idea that the instructor bears full responsibility for the training of the diver.

Compounding this is a clientle that only wants the briefest and easiest class to get them in the water.

How in the world do we fix this??

A simple example of standards is the swimming evaluation(see the thread-should non swimmers be allowed to dive). Picture what would happen if the standard for all agencies was the perspective dive student must first demonstrate the ability to swim 200 meters non stop with proficiency. How many people would be diving now?

Ascent skills standard. Ascend in a horizontal position at no more than 30 feet per minute making motionless unsupported stops at 10 foot intervals.

Descent skills standard. Descend ina horizontal position at no more than 50 feet per minute making motionless unsupported stops every 10 feet.

Be able to perform while hovering and then ascending buddy breathing and other air sharing techniques while making a proper ascent without having a mask on.

These are just some examples--raising the standards would need to be more comprehensive IMHO.

How long would it take the perspective diver to learn and master these standards? What would it cost to teach these courses? How many checkout dives would it take?

Click to expand...

I have a little triangle that I draw to explain the forces at work in a project. On one corner a "Q" for quality, on one corner a "T" for time and on one corner a "$" for money. The area inside the traingle is the scope. All parties involved have expectations about all three corners of the triangle and if you push or pull on one corner then it affects that shape of the whole triangle. Often in fixed-time/fixed-price projects you use change control and phasing to absorb changes in scope to protect your Q or you let the Q corner move to to allow for changes in scope......but you budget conservatively to manage the risk of Q due to pressure on T or $.

Enough about project-management. In diving training I think we're experiencing something similar.

On the "Q" corner, the agency sets the standards and has an expectation of the quality. I'm not sure that this expectation is actually shared by the other parties but at least the instructor is required to adhere to Q. This makes Q an immovable corner of the triangle in theory.

The agency also has a little expectation about $--a minimum but no maximum. The customer has an expectation of $ too, a maximum but no minimum. The difference is the bandwidth that the instructor has for pricing his course.

So the instructor charges a fixed price and this corner of the triangle is no longer allowed to move. But if you fix the $ and Q then you can only move the T.

But what happens when the T moves?

Well, if you're smart you've asked enough for your course (budgeting conservatively) so that the T can move a bit without having to cash in on Q or $. What happens, however is that many instructors don't (or can't) charge enough to allow T to move and then they end up with a fixed Q, a fixed T and a fixed $.

so....in this case, if you have a student with learning problems and your T starts to move then (aside from feeling huge time pressure) you will either need to move Q or lose money. Some instructors, like one or two here move the $ anyway not wanting to compromise on Q and then they try to compensate by selling gear. Other instructors move the Q anyway because the agencies are weak at quality-control and he problably won't get caught. What we do in our club is split out the bad learners if we have a lot of them in one group and put them in other groups to spread out the pressure on T but even this is more of a blood-pressure control measure for the instructor than actually solving the problem.

Resort courses have a worse problem. The T and the $ are both fixed and T is so tight given the scope (course content) that instructors don't even try adhering to Q.

The solution? Sounds to me like some schools need to market their higher prices better by making it explicit that they focus on Q and take more T which costs more $. Some students will choose for this. Maybe GUE does this, I'm not sure. Other schools will offer fixed-time/fixed-price and not make the claims about Q. This will sound attractive to others.

What I gather from all these discussions is that most people (instructors) have the impression that students won't choose for Q but I think many would if you were to discuss it with them up front (ie. put Q on the radar). What happens now is that customers focus on the $ because it's visible and they make assumptions (often incorrect) about quality. It's on you as instructor to get quality on the radar before you make the sale.

I can even imagine a shop offering two variants. The "normal" cert and the "delux" version with a smaller group size a few more supervised dives and more time for skills drilling and skills games. Maybe even throw in the buoyancy specialty.... why not? The truly smart business man will try to stimulate the delux version with other perks like discounts on (rental) gear, a free-air fill card, club membership etc etc The limit is your own creativity.

R..

Ask the military community how they train their divers and duplicate their methods. LOL

Of course, I don't believe that many of us would be interested in a multi-week, boot camp course.

I thought that those were the standards for many years and that is what kept me from diving (along with the cost). Nothing has changed, I wouldn't go through a course like that to learn to dive. I would be a safer diver if I did, but I simply wouldn't go through the hassle of learning to dive and I would be a land-lubber who never bought any gear or advanced training.

That having been said, I feel that most of the recreational standards are adequate for the average diver. The problems revolve around cost pressures to get students through courses as fast as possible, so some standards get overlooked. Mike F. can't train students as adequately as he would like due to these constraints, so he is being forced out of the business. I know that our LDS has emphasize Buoyancy control and a couple of other items and skim the rest of it. At least they keep the
Another philosophy difference that comes into play. I am a person who believes that (and this DOES depend on the student) students off the bottom. I know that our LDS ower would love to have time to cover more, but he just doesn't have it. We have to rush through our classes half the time as it is.

I am a firm believer that if it is not a "building block skill" and the student is getting too frustrated, you are spinning your wheels. Go onto the next skill and come back to the one that needs work at the end of the classtime. By this point, hopefully, the student has developed the confidence to learn it right and will do well. However, all skills should be completed prior to Open Water Training, even if they are "out of order."

Many agencies are strict about the order in which skills are taught and performed.

Yes, higher standards would be nice, but most likely will not happen.

I started SSI in January and we were required to swim 8 laps in a medium-size pool... I think that would amount to 160 yards, but I'm guessing it's a 30' pool.

This was just so you know.

diverbrian once bubbled...
Ask the military community how they train their divers and duplicate their methods. LOL

Of course, I don't believe that many of us would be interested in a multi-week, boot camp course.

Click to expand...

So it's that simple! You establish a dive-tax and everybody has to pay. Several "chosen" divers/agencies spend it without any real control.

Nobody is asking for a bootcamp style course we are asking for training instead of buying a card. Some people want to buy the card and be on there way but then that hurts folks like myself. I have never taken a course after basic just becuase I get the same knowledge from buying the book and cruising the internet. Plus you can find accident analasys on the web that you wont find in your dive shop. This ,IMHO, gives you a tremendous amount of experience just by learning from others mistakes.

My basic scuba course was excellent for skills training but I then moved away and started finding these other lds's that we are talking about here. My ow class was six weeks longs, 2 hours pool, 2 hours book per week (BTW she graded our homework as we walked in the door). We had to swim 200 meters just to take the class. the owi instructer drilled the skils into our head. during pool sessions she would swim up behind you and turn off you air and make you due an esa or buddy breathing exercise. We did an exercise where we blacked out our masks with aluminum foil then did a simulated silt out dive. I know this sounds excess but she turned out some good students.

BTW I finally found what I believe to be a good instructer locally so I am now enrolled in My nitrox course. I picked up the naui nitrox book on sat. evening and finished it up yesterday. Dont you wish everyone approached scuba with such an enthusastic attitude.