If you were to design your own OW course, how would it go?

[Eric Sedletzky]

Just curious as to peoples’ thoughts on this.
Knowing what you know now as a certified diver, if you were to set up your own OW course how would it go?
What skills would you include?
How long would it take?
And how would you price it?

In this day and age of seemingly constant agency bashing and complaints about how training was incomplete and how people feel ripped off, this is your chance to vent about it and describe how you would have done things differently.
From what I hear, training definitely is NOT standardized throughout basic OW, and in many cases not even within the same agency. Some people are just fine with how their training went, and some not so much.
Is this just a personal perception/perspective thing? Is the average training closer than we think and maybe it’s the differences in peoples’ expectations that account for the discrepancies?

Do you feel your training was:
1. Just fine, wouldn’t change a thing.
2. OK, but there were a few things that could have been better.
3. Not that great, but I learned barely enough to keep diving and continue to learn more.
4. Was a complete disaster and I wasn’t comfortable diving because of the lack of training.
5. ^^ Had to retake OW with a different instructor/agency.

Thread open to any OW certified diver that has a comment (not just instructors)
What are your thoughts?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I think my OW training was pretty good ... but dated. Some of the skills we were taught were more based on tradition than practicality, and although I did get some benefit from them I though the time could've been better spent focusing on and repeating practice with skills more applicable to scuba diving than swimming.

I took the course in 2001, from the YMCA. The class was four weeks long, included 16 hours of class time, 16 hours of pool time, and five checkout dives. I thought the class and pool time were adequate to cover the curriculum, and gave plenty of opportunity for the practice and repetition to ingrain the skills. I went for my checkout dives feeling truly prepared. But in local conditions the pool offers little preparation the reality of cold, murky water and a very silty bottom. Suddenly I'm wearing gloves, hood and a heavy rental wetsuit that didn't fit me all that well. And it was hard to see anything ... primarily because we were kicking up the bottom so much But we did all of our skills on our knees, and any time we spent off the bottom we were "touring". So there was little practice on actual buoyancy control. That's the one thing I think we could have done better. But I felt that I learned enough to continue diving ... even well enough prepared to go out diving unsupervised with a fellow classmate immediately upon completing the class. And because we felt adequately prepared we went diving often, and that's where the real learning came about.

When I began teaching I adopted much of what I experienced in my own OW class, but with more emphasis on buoyancy control. My students began on their knees as I was taught, but quickly moved from there to a fin pivot, then to raising the fins off the bottom and doing skills while hovering. I found that approach gave students a chance to begin with what was familiar to them (vertically oriented with some help from gravity), then move to a more "normal" in-water position with fin tips helping them stabilize, then getting horizontal with no touching. The multistep process worked well. When we went to open water we repeated the process, giving the students time to transition in the very different environment and heavier exposure gear they had to use for the checkout dives.

The OW class took about three weeks, and I charged anywhere from $350 to $600 per student, depending on how many students I had for a given class (from one to four).

If I were teaching OW today I would try the "no touch" approach I see some other instructors using. I think there's benefit in learning that way from the beginning, although I think my transitional approach ultimately accomplished the same thing, just perhaps not as effectively.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[KevinNM]

I’d probably call it Rec1.

 

[Bubblesong]

My ideal shop would always have on location dedicated deep pool or quarry, so that there could be unlimited, inclusive practice without having to bring a truckload of equipment to and fro.
Maybe my retirement job.

 

[The Chairman]

I thought about this a bit. Here are the skills as I teach them now:

• Closed water session 1:
  • No Scuba Gear
    • Watermanship skills
    • Learn to clear your mask in a kiddie pool
  • With Scuba in the pool
    • Put on BC on the surface
    • Establish proper weighting
    • Frog kick (optional)
    • Learn how to get Trim
    • Learn how to establish Neutral Buoyancy (lots of laps)
    • Descents & Ascents
    • Stop, hover, and turn drills
    • OOA donate/receive/ascend
    • Buddy breathe two laps (no depth change)
• Closed water session 2:
  • Surface tows
  • Horizontal CESAs
  • Cramp removals
  • More laps: getting used to being trim and neutral
  • Swim without mask
  • Learn how to get close to the bottom
  • Swim on either side.
  • Descent/ascent drills (using only your breath: no power inflator)
  • 2 pound weight drill (men must be able to breathe 6 pounds neutral and women have to do 4 pounds)
  • Underwater Jenga

I might have missed something. I'm installing a new kitchen sink at the moment.

 

[northernone]

Here's a overstatement of what I put in my adaptive diving training programs:

I'm a firm believing in learning how to dive, while diving. None of the silly pantomime acts.

The mentorship model of learning: "1. watch, 2. help, 3. do" is personally great for me. See what is needed to dive safely. Participate with an experienced diver. Go dive.

The behaviours needed underwater are highly practical. The conceptual learning component doesn't need much theoretical presentation, it's very much pragmatic knowledge.

My initial trainings did not result in a certification but formed me into a diver, when I eventually did a OW cert, it was a picture perfect PADI style course which demonstrated a well thought out learning progression and was predictably taught as such.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

My class in 1989 was similar to Bob's except it was six weeks. I would have liked to have some free diving lessons for the first week. Although my wife (at the time) and I had been free diving a lot, there were a few others in the class who were not comfortable in the water and two who had never worn a wetsuit before.

 

[nolatom]

I thought it was fine. There's only so much you can teach (correction--only so much I can learn) in four pool and four open-water sessions.

I liked my shop and the instructors, a husband/wife team (now retired) where he had commercial diving experience before opening the shop. I felt well-prepared by them, and noticed in some of my early trips (Flower Gardens/Stetson way offshore) that "their" divers tended to stay out of trouble, and also tended to be the ones going to the assistance of those who didn't. Also it seemed a fair number of their students went on to become instructors or DMs.

I also took AOW and Rescue from them, but that's beyond the topic so I'll stop here.

 

[JamesBon92007]

If I may answer for my girlfriend who was recently certified...

For her it was selection #5: she took the course again with a different instructor.

From my personal point of view it seems that most newly certified OW divers feel compelled to immediately take the AOW course so they must not feel that they got enough from the OW course. Either that or the marketing strategies are working very well. I think there should be a readily available option to take the OW and AOW courses together as one course. Instead of having to pay, say $450 and $450 again it should be discounted somewhat if both courses are taken together. I don't know if that would increase or reduce the annual revenue of most instructors--what is the percentage of divers who take both courses within the same year? I'm just guessing but I would think that a more confident diver is more likely to continue diving and consequently spend more money which helps keep the industry going. Another option might be to include "Rescue" too as part of a "Package Deal." Maybe somebody is already doing this but in my searching I only found two examples--one was somewhere in the US and the other was on Bali.

I didn't answer for myself because I didn't have the options that we have today. What was offered to me (1969) was "Scuba Diver" which included either shore dives or, for more money, boat dives. The "continued education" course was called "Instructor."

 

[Landau]

I've taken OW twice. I didn't dive for 30 years in between and only had few dives after my original OW so I thought it best to repeat it.

Despite many comments here about OW being watered down, my NAUI Scuba Diver in 1979 and my PADI OW in 2015 were very similar.

Differences that I can remember

NAUI 1979
+ Buddy Breathing (No Octos)
+ More what to look for in gear from Instructor during classes
+ Separate tank harness + Mae West style oral inflate BCD
+ Underwater swim test "as far as you can go"

PADI 2015
+ Navigation skills (no compass in 1979 course)
+ Much more emphasis on neutral buoyancy and hovering