3-Day Open Water Certification?

[Storker]

Boredom kills the ability to learn like nothing else.

Absolutely.

Busy work does not always improve skills if the student does not feel challenged. It breeds arrogance and complacency and those are a dangerous combination for divers.

Absolutely. On the other hand, a short, intensive class can easily miss the opportunity for overlearning. And making overlearning something more than a tedious chore is a real challenge for any teacher/coach/tutor. I don't teach SCUBA, and I'm not qualified to do it, but it seems to me that some aspects of SCUBA diving, especially emergency responses, may benefit from overlearning. Provided the teacher can make that something more than a tedious chore.

Disclaimer: I haven't followed any of your classes (or those of anyone else present in this thread, BTW), so I don't have any opinion on the quality of those classes and whom they are appropriate for, so I can only discuss the general aspects of teaching and how that fits with my own teaching experience.

 

[The Chairman]

When it comes to emergencies, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There's a lot of time spent on things like CESAs which never should be needed by a competent diver. Never. A CESA means that you have not only not paid attention to your air supply, but that your buddy has failed to pay attention to your air supply and that you have been separated from your buddy. More emphasis should be put on buddy and air management rather than how to deal with ignoring them. Moreover, it seems that most white knuckle dives come from the diver's failure to maintain neutral buoyancy. If they are out of control, then they are going to be stressed to the point where they just might lose their buddy and lose track of their air. It's a cascade effect that can easily be avoided by proper training.

 

[ScubaSteve_SoCal]

When it comes to emergencies, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There's a lot of time spent on things like CESAs which never should be needed by a competent diver. Never. A CESA means that you have not only not paid attention to your air supply, but that your buddy has failed to pay attention to your air supply and that you have been separated from your buddy. More emphasis should be put on buddy and air management rather than how to deal with ignoring them. Moreover, it seems that most white knuckle dives come from the diver's failure to maintain neutral buoyancy. If they are out of control, then they are going to be stressed to the point where they just might lose their buddy and lose track of their air. It's a cascade effect that can easily be avoided by proper training.

NetDoc,

It's edifying to read your post. The amount of emphasis I've seen some instructors place on CESAs at the expense of gas and buddy management always puzzled me, and I even asked a couple for their thoughts on it. One pointed out that our slates devote an entire side to CESA, which struck me as very odd and I felt sort of missed the intent of the "suite" of OOA management strategies, the very first being prevention. I've always found that people are better equipped when you put things in proper context; eg, this is very unlikely to happen as you will be near your buddy and managing your air supply, but in the event something does happen, here's how you handle it...

 

[The Chairman]

I only do CESA's in the pool and not in OW. Multiple CESAs set a bad example for the student and present an injury vector for the instructor. All my OW students are NASE if for no other reason than that. Gas & buddy management are a part of every pool session and every OW dive. NetDoc's third rule: you have fifteen seconds to locate and touch your buddy. I can't remember the last time I've had to ask someone where their buddy was. At the end of each dive, my students have to tell me how much gas their buddy has. Then they have to tell me how much gas they have. Then we look at the gauges.

 

[boulderjohn]

Great post, Pete.

I remember a day when I was in the English teacher's office and one of the teachers, a person with a great reputation for her teaching, came in, plopped down in her chair, and gazed at the ceiling with a dazed look in her eye. "What's up?" I asked. She explained that she had taught a lesson in one day that taught her students what would have taken her two weeks of lessons to accomplish in the past. She had tried a totally different approach, and the results were beyond incredible.

You have to keep your mind open to new ideas, and you have to accept that doing something differently than you have done it in the past--differently than the way everyone you know has done it in the past--can have staggeringly marvelous results.

Of course, if you just sit back harrumphing with crossed arms about how badly standards have deteriorated, you will never have that experience.

 

[The Chairman]

You have to keep your mind open to new ideas,

Thanks for the kind words, John. During my IDC (which wasn't all that fun! ) evolution of your teaching technique was preached over and over again. They emphasized that your best class should always be your next one. I agree with that philosophy. Indeedy, I do.