Survey Results: Student Preparedness & Satisfaction Following Pool/Confined Water

[beanojones]

You may have misunderstood the idea of the percentage of pool time spent diving. Your posts seem to indicate your are thinking of two categories of pool time: 1) instructor briefing and 2) diving. That is not what the survey data meant. There are actually three categories: 1) instructor briefing, 2) skill demonstrations and student performance of skills, and 3) swimming around to practice neutral buoyancy swimming while not demonstrating a skill. The survey attempted to find out about category #3. Under the old PADI standards, it was possible to spend about 98% of pool time on items #1 and #2 and still be within standards. Almost no neutral buoyancy swimming was required. There was not one second of neutral buoyancy swimming not connected to a specific skill in the class I took, and I suspect there has been a lot of that in a lot of places over the years.

See I see all those categories as run together by most instructors, new standards or no, because they are still stuck in the metaphor of blather (Brief and Demo). PADI tried with "Start Diving Today" to do something about an instructor's voice taking over the open water class, but that never took at all. Probably because most instrcutors don;t actually do open water intros, so they have no idea just how capable even uncertified divers are, until we instrcutors start getting in their way.

Far too many instructors who are locked into their way of doing things, because they think what they are doing matters, when all that matters is what a student is doing. Or in the case of a 6 week open water course, not doing.

As I mentioned, I did a pool session with a local shop where the Course Director was trying to work out with the instructors how to do things with the new OW course.

The CD almost drowned himself doing a midwater, swimming, neutral buoyancy scuba unit R&R, which told me this: At no point had that CD ever actually thought about the students when teaching, at least this skill, in the OW class. He had his "Demo" and he had his "Brief", but at no point had he ever actually considered why students should be comfortable doing this skill, and it showed. I take my gear off randomly all the time when diving. (My favorite story about this skill was watching the Japanese twins in their first post certification dive, sitting on their jackets at midwater and posing for each other. (There was no camera involved.) The skill was just one more fun thing to when weightless.)

The CD had to think about how to "Demo" a reg recovery when actually in diving position. (because just like the scuba R&R, it was clear he had never once thought about the students when teaching, at least this skill as well, in the OW class.

Because no diver ever sweeps to find his reg, when actually diving, instead of teaching. It simply results in no reg 99/100, and so it is something no diver ever does to find his reg, except when standing on land or the boat.


It is a major hassle to do all the "skills" "demo" and evaluation CW, and "Skills" evaluation (OW) while actually swimming around neutrally buoyant for both the instructor, and the student. The bookkeeping is a nightmare, and control is basically done by actually critically evaluating what a diver is doing, and not whether a diver can copy the instructor. And of course there is absolutely no briefing done because there is no talking in diving, and very few "DEMOs".

BUt this in fact is the way diving happens, so training someone the way diving happens actually results in student divers acting like divers rather than students. Divers learn new skills by watching what other divers are doing and stealing what works for them.

Why learn a fake way to do something (Reg recovery via sweep, Kneeling on the bottom to do a scuba unit R&R, etc), when a student can learn the way divers actually do it, if the very first time they do the skill, they do it while actually diving?

 

[widget]

Widget... I think there are issues of geographic location - and scale - in the US that don't always exist elsewhere. Consider that folks like boulderjohn teach in an area that is nowhere near anyplace with warm water. If divers want to start their training at home - and a great many do - they will certainly NOT do their checkout dives with that same instructor. Even here in NJ, shop logistics are such that even if you do your checkout dives locally (a 4-5mo of the year proposition anyway) there's a better than even chance you'll have a different instructor than you did in the pool.

Sure, I understand the logistical issue hence my saying its probably accepted as a norm domestically, however just because its accepted doesn't make it good, I still maintain its not a great way to train competent student divers.

I also think there can be ways to work around it and many schools do, I was in Canada a few years back in winter and wondered into a shop and asked if there was any diving going on I could join, they said look out the window, its snowing, we are still training divers but we fly to Miami as a tour group 3 or 4 times during winter and all our students do their OW dives in the Keys, but still with us as a school.

Referrals have their place I think, but its also possible some shops exploit the idea and just see it as a way of pumping out divers with very, very, little concern for their future well being, let someone else worry about it,... OW dives are a critical part of training, arguably the most important, I think its vital to have a trusting relationship with your instructor and thats not always possible on a referral basis.

---------- Post added April 8th, 2015 at 04:36 PM ----------



However, the data suggests that it's exactly those people - local pool, warm-water referral - who have the HIGHEST retention rates among all divers.

n=1, but that's how I did it.

So "chin stroking" impression was correct, divers trained in a comfortable warm water environment stay diving.?

 

[beanojones]

Not even the shops/instructors offering the types of courses that seem to correlate with poorly prepared, less satisfied students?

:shocked2:

Actually, I think there is a real segment of the market on both sides which is happy as clams about that situation just as it is.

1. The "bucket list" students who are simply crossing "Get Dive Certified" off the list.

and

2. The "we delivered that sort of course" operators who fill that need.

It would be great if, as instructors/operators we could find out the real motivation of a student, because if it is just a "bucket list" certification, then any half ass course would do. In fact, the faster the better on both sides, both the students who are not interested in anything other than being able to cross "having gotten certified" of their bucket list, and the operators who can churn out the numbers to make any course fee profitable.

The skill of being a working instructor (that frankly I have only met in myself, and the few I have hypmotized into sharing my approach) is to take the outline of a "bucket list" course, in terms of time allotted and student interest (or in fact lack of interest), and turn it into an actual diving course.

Pick ye metaphor: I think the first thing a writer learns is to write a first draft, and then relentless hack away the chaff. Or in technical terms do an Apple, and start with a laundry list of features, and then pare away and then pare away until only a single gleaming product remains.

It's really easy to teach a sloppy 6 week course, or a sloppy 2 day course for that matter, that meets all the standards, and ends up with nothing to show for it in terms of a diver's ability to actual dive, or alternatively desire to dive.

It is possible (though not in the slightest bit easy)to teach people to actually dive in amazingly short times. BoulderJohn routinely points out his "a-ha" moment as coming when he realized that DSDs in their pool were learning how to actually dive almost at once, and Open Water students having completed CW 1-5 were still struggling to effectively maintain heading and buoyancy. Not to speak his words for himself, but that was what started him into the article which hopefully was a big part of the updated OW course.

 

[RJP]

So "chin stroking" impression was correct, divers trained in a comfortable warm water environment stay diving.?

One more time, for clarity's sake:

Divers who are trained in pools - and do their checkout dives in warm water - have a high propensity to stay diving.

Divers who do all of their training in comfortable warm water have a high propensity to leave diving.

 

[widget]

One more time, for clarity's sake:

Divers who are trained in pools - and do their checkout dives in warm water - have a high propensity to stay diving.

Divers who do all of their training in comfortable warm water have a high propensity to leave diving.

Hmm, not my mileage at all, not saying your stats are skewed, obviously from the responses you got thats the outcome, but thats not my experience, from the 30 odd years of training divers all over the world tells me different.

---------- Post added April 9th, 2015 at 03:36 PM ----------

Actually, I think there is a real segment of the market on both sides which is happy as clams about that situation just as it is.

1. The "bucket list" students who are simply crossing "Get Dive Certified" off the list.

and

2. The "we delivered that sort of course" operators who fill that need.

It would be great if, as instructors/operators we could find out the real motivation of a student, because if it is just a "bucket list" certification, then any half ass course would do. In fact, the faster the better on both sides, both the students who are not interested in anything other than being able to cross "having gotten certified" of their bucket list, and the operators who can churn out the numbers to make any course fee profitable.

The skill of being a working instructor (that frankly I have only met in myself, and the few I have hypmotized into sharing my approach) is to take the outline of a "bucket list" course, in terms of time allotted and student interest (or in fact lack of interest), and turn it into an actual diving course.

Pick ye metaphor: I think the first thing a writer learns is to write a first draft, and then relentless hack away the chaff. Or in technical terms do an Apple, and start with a laundry list of features, and then pare away and then pare away until only a single gleaming product remains.

It's really easy to teach a sloppy 6 week course, or a sloppy 2 day course for that matter, that meets all the standards, and ends up with nothing to show for it in terms of a diver's ability to actual dive, or alternatively desire to dive.

It is possible (though not in the slightest bit easy)to teach people to actually dive in amazingly short times. BoulderJohn routinely points out his "a-ha" moment as coming when he realized that DSDs in their pool were learning how to actually dive almost at once, and Open Water students having completed CW 1-5 were still struggling to effectively maintain heading and buoyancy. Not to speak his words for himself, but that was what started him into the article which hopefully was a big part of the updated OW course.

Indeed it is, however, there is a correlation between water time and comfort levels, the longer a student spends in the water doing the same (perhaps) monotonous procedures the more confident he / she becomes, there is no doubt about that, 3 day courses simply do not allow sufficient time for students to get water comfortable. The crux for me boils down to how a student reacts on the first open water dive. As an example- When I did my course 30 odd years ago the instructor turned our air off (with no warning) whilst on an OW dive as a test, but it was fine, everyone was comfortable enough to just reach over and turn it back on - trying that on a diver with 3 water day's experience today will probably land you in a rescue situation at best, in court at worst. Now lets be clear, I am NOT condoning turning off a students air, nor am I saying its good, desirable or even necessary, I am not in any way saying that, I well understand the implications, course requirements and prohibitions of such an act, I am just saying thats what we underwent after probably 40 or more hours of pool and controlled water work, nothing more nothing less, and just using it as an example of how time in water definitely does make a student more competent and comfortable.

I fully agree with you, getting a student to just go through the motions to satisfy a course directive is one thing, but getting water comfortable and confident is quite another, that only comes with time and repetition, something a 3 day course can never teach.

 

[Jack Hammer]

One more time, for clarity's sake:

Divers who are trained in pools - and do their checkout dives in warm water - have a high propensity to stay diving.

Divers who do all of their training in comfortable warm water have a high propensity to leave diving.

The pool I trained in was heated with comfortable warm water, yet I'm still diving.... [emoji6]

In all seriousness, having worked in the past in market research i can say from personal experience that most people have an extremely difficult time understanding how information collected is useful or applies. Most folk seem to get overly focused on the specific wording of the questions or how a specific portion doesn't apply to them. I'm more curious as to what the intent of the gathering of the info is.

Sent via

 

[beanojones]

but getting water comfortable and confident is quite another, that only comes with time and repetition, something a 3 day course can never teach.

It is possible (though not in the slightest bit easy)to teach people to actually dive in amazingly short times. BoulderJohn routinely points out his "a-ha" moment as coming when he realized that DSDs in their pool were learning how to actually dive almost at once, and Open Water students having completed CW 1-5 were still struggling to effectively maintain heading and buoyancy. Not to speak his words for himself, but that was what started him into the article which hopefully was a big part of the updated OW course.

Quoting myself because this is the point. It takes almost no time at all for people to comfortably and effectively dive (basically) neutrally buoyant. It takes some minor time to add appropriate reactions to problems on top of that.

And that's why I am relaying what BoulderJohn has said many many times about the fact that one time in the pool DSD's are very often better divers than OW students coming out of CW 1-5. The DSD's have no tools to deal with the extraneous stuff that does not usually happen on the average dive, but the actual core goal of behind getting certified (i.e. being able to move through the water comfortably and effectively) happens in no time at all.

Longer course actual separate students from the goal of diving, because there is the unfounded belief that long courses results in something other than wasting someone's time.

It's simply unfounded. (And repeating it again and again does not make it so.) Long courses do not result in better divers because of their length. They may accidentally make for better divers because, as I have see every day in Hawaii, people can teach themselves to dive given enough time. Our goal as instructors is (or should be) to save students time, to make their learning vastly more effectively and efficient than if we were not there.

And most dive instruction, and most dive instructors, simply don't get that our role is completely replaceable by no instruction at all, if all we can do is teach someone to dive in six weeks.

Any can teach themselves to dive quicker than that.

 

[descent]

... And most dive instruction, and most dive instructors, simply don't get that our role is completely replaceable by no instruction at all, if all we can do is teach someone to dive in six weeks.

This is an excellent insight.

For decades, people bought gear, walked down to the shore, and taught themselves.

Any instructor who is not adding something valuable beyond that simple experience should be experiencing downward price pressure.

$99 open water classes today. $79 tomorrow?

 

[beanojones]

This is an excellent insight.

For decades, people bought gear, walked down to the shore, and taught themselves.

Any instructor who is not adding something valuable beyond that simple experience should be experiencing downward price pressure.

$99 open water classes today. $79 tomorrow?

Actually, for most aware buyers, the reverse is even more true. Efficient, effective, high value items are rewarded with high resale price. Of course, negative value items are similarly rewarded with negative price pressure, too.

A complete, planned, efficient, effective course is worth more to the aware buyer because they are not having their time wasted.

I can fix my sink, my toilet, change my own oil, etc. But for most people, paying someone who knows how to do it, owns the tools, and has all the just in case stuff ready to hand is well worth it.

 

[WB2GLP]

When viewing the entire presentation on your site, there's something to learn from almost every slide. Thanks Ray!