3-Day Open Water Certification?

[NorCalDM]

Teaching somebody a "task" is the easy part and some can get it in a three day class some will get in a six month class and some will never get it. Sitting in pool or your open water dives and demonstrating a task to your instructor when you know what to expect to me is not a skill and most people can do it with little practice the skill comes in when you have to do it under real world stress. Dealing with a dislodged mask or regulator when it is not expected is when the skill comes in and understanding the meaning behind the the task will determine the outcome. Not every bad diver is the result of a bad instructor some students will never get it but will be able to demonstrate the task but never have the skill. We have a saying for the baseball team I coach "Adversity does not build character it reveals it".

 

[Storker]

For a new (or rusty) diver, it only takes a couple of annoyances to take them from "stressed" to "panic". A mask that leaks a little, a reg that gets water in it, maybe a lose tank or a broken fin strap. The possibilities are numerous.

Srsly, if you freak out just because of a slight mask leak or a loose fin, you're not spending enough time in the water. No matter if it's with or without a tank on your back, with or without fins, with or without a mask or whatever. Get into the water and get comfortable. You're not dying from a little water in your face. SCUBA training isn't the issue. Spending time in water is.

 

[TSandM]

As I have said elsewhere, we just finished a semi-private OW class. One of the students had some significant anxiety issues, in particular with any exercise that involved taking the regulator out of his mouth, or having his gas turned off. In the beginning, these things would send him to the surface, which wasn't a huge issue, since he was doing them in water shallow enough to stand up. We have 6 confined water sessions spread over 3 weeks; it took all six of them to get this student to relax about not having a regulator in his mouth.

Now, suppose he'd had all his pool time in one day? COULD he take the regulator out and recover it? Sure. Was he comfortable and confident doing so? No, but it didn't prevent a competent exercise of the drill. If this person had gone on to be certified in three days, I can almost guarantee you that it's highly unlikely he would ever voluntarily take his regulator out of his mouth again . . . and a year later, when somebody kicked it out, I'd give at least even odds he'd bolt.

Having worked with this student and shown him that calm repetition actually did affect his anxiety, and having three weeks to keep repeating how important it is to identify and extinguish your "rattles" as a diver, I think this student WILL practice regulator exchanges and the like, at least for a while . . . and I think and hope it's less likely he'll bolt if faced with this issue in the future.

 

[TomZ]

97% of drivers believe they are "better than average". That sentiment seems to apply to divers too. Hmmm.

"You don't know what you don't know."

Just throwing around some old chestnuts for consideration.

 

[RJP]

and free is a great price for nothing.

Worth every penny!

---------- Post added November 27th, 2014 at 09:38 PM ----------

When you finish your course, come up to North Florida and I will , for no charge, complete by NAUI standards everything your PADI zero to hero course has left out.

And if you want to be a NAUI DM you'll only need 16 more dives... so you've got that going for you, which is nice.

:d

What is the minimum amount of time allowed for a NAUI OW course?

It's the instructor... not the agency.

---------- Post added November 27th, 2014 at 09:43 PM ----------

I think the people that think 3 days is too quick might have had trouble in their class. If you aren't comfortable in the water maybe it takes you longer to pass the class?

Believe me, I had zero trouble in my class. But as a student or instructor I wouldn't recommend a 3-day course to anyone. Frankly, for myself I'd want at least week between pool sessions just to make sure I had retain everything. Anyone can remember a bunch of stuff for a three days. Diving is about imprinting information, internalizing it, and building on it. Can you come back to the pool this week and still perform what we signed off on last week?

No matter how proficient a student is, in a three-day class there's no way for me as an instructor - or you as the student - to know whether you're capable of actually retaining any of the information for more than three days.

---------- Post added November 27th, 2014 at 09:45 PM ----------

There are millions of ill-experienced divers out there, and yet the scuba death rate is still insanely low (1 in 211,864 according to DAN).

Some of us aspire to turning out OW diver who are a more than a notch or two above "not dead yet" or even "ill-experienced."

Call me crazy, but I take the idea of "mastery" of skill to heart. In three days I can get ANY student to the point where they can finally do every skill right. It takes much more time than that to get a student - no matter how good they are - to the point where they finally can't do any skill WRONG.

That's mastery.

That's not do-able in three days.

 

[TomZ]

I'd be interested in learning the statistics for the number of active committed divers who took 3 day courses vs. the rate for longer formats. O/W is just the first step. Keeping them diving is the goal, since the overall drop-out rate exceeds 75%. If there is a disproportionate drop-out rate among the 3-day certed divers, that should be some interesting data.
As a sport we cannot sustain 75% losses of O/W divers.

 

[RJP]

As a sport we cannot sustain 75% losses of O/W divers.

The attrition rate of patients taking cardiac meds post MI is about 75% after 12 months. Below is the drop-off rate for various meds in various disease states. 60% of breast cancer patients don't comply with therapy after 12mo or so. The dramatic drop-off at 3mo indicates just how many never even fill the SECOND prescription.

If we can't get people to keep taking meds that help prevent them from dying... how arrogant must we be to suspect we can wave a magic wand and fix diver attrition?

I'd suspect the attrition rate of 3-day course divers IS lower. The main reason is that a fair number of these people are essentially "non-divers" anyway. They only opted to get certified because the hassle factor was "lower enough" to reduce their barrier to entry to an artificially low level.

So the real question is essentially whether the sport is better off with these people getting certified and then dropping out... or never having been certified at all.

 

[Bob DBF]

No teaching experience in scuba--although I work as an elementary school teacher. I know every student is different, and I'm sure there are people that need way more than 3 days. I'm just speaking to the opinion that 3 day courses are, in of themselves, unsatisfactory and dangerous. They clearly work for some people, is all I'm saying. There are millions of ill-experienced divers out there, and yet the scuba death rate is still insanely low (1 in 211,864 according to DAN).

There is virtually no one that keeps accurate statistics for the SCUBA industry, never mind gives them to anyone else. PADI, as an example, gives a number that certify each year, but does not specificy which certification. So anyone giving, say a death rate, has to make their best guess, it may be close but not because of accurate data. Say that number was taken a few years back, I know two divers that made one dive after certification, had a problem at depth, bolted, and will never dive again, so they are certified divers that did not die diving.

The next question would be how many, if any, of the divers in that statistic took a three day class.

You see the major problem with getting a handle on the industry is that, although all the individual players may keep good records, none of them make the data available. That is their choice, but anyone who gives statistics on the industry have to make a lot of assumptions rather than using good data.

The deaths in SCUBA are low, but there is no way of telling why. On the top of the front end statics, when a diver dies there is no one in the industry that finds and follows up each diver fatality to determines the cause, so some may never make it into that end of the equation.


"There are millions of ill-experienced divers out there," some quit diving, some dive with DM's, some get better at diving, and no one knows or tracks which is which.




Bob
---------------------------------------
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
Mark Twain

 

[Storker]

The attrition rate of patients taking cardiac meds post MI is about 75% after 12 months. Below is the drop-off rate for various meds in various disease states. 60% of breast cancer patients don't comply with therapy after 12mo or so. The dramatic drop-off at 3mo indicates just how many never even fill the SECOND prescription.

Wow. Just... wow.

US or international numbers? Any chance this has anything to do with economy, like, not being able to afford the meds and/or follow-up appointments?

 

[flots am]

Are you sure those numbers are real (after 2 years BP meds are down to 20%)? Why would anybody want to risk a stroke or heart attack because they don't want to take a cheap pill with minimal side effects?

flots.

The attrition rate of patients taking cardiac meds post MI is about 75% after 12 months. Below is the drop-off rate for various meds in various disease states. 60% of breast cancer patients don't comply with therapy after 12mo or so. The dramatic drop-off at 3mo indicates just how many never even fill the SECOND prescription.

If we can't get people to keep taking meds that help prevent them from dying... how arrogant must we be to suspect we can wave a magic wand and fix diver attrition?

I'd suspect the attrition rate of 3-day course divers IS lower. The main reason is that a fair number of these people are essentially "non-divers" anyway. They only opted to get certified because the hassle factor was "lower enough" to reduce their barrier to entry to an artificially low level.

So the real question is essentially whether the sport is better off with these people getting certified and then dropping out... or never having been certified at all.