Dispelling scubaboard myths (Part 1: It is the instructor not the agency)

[KevinNM]

@Saboteur honestly? for basic open water just get him certified by wherever is cheapest or wherever you go for air fills and then mentor him. At the recreational level, shopping for an instructor is usually a wasted effort in my opinion because the courses are so short that it isn't going to make that much of a difference

There is a lot of stuff that will persist from your first course until you work at changing that. So I'm not at all sure on that. Here I know a couple of instructors locally who are safe and competent instructors and will produce safe and adequate divers. But if I wanted someone taught such that they had minimal of what I consider bad diving habits I'd have to travel.

 

[DevonDiver]

So what would be the questions to ask or what to look for?

Here's your first clue..

... courses are so short that it isn't going to make that much of a difference

An 'off-the-shelf' outfit/instructor will always advertise/quote you based on the bare minimum agency requirement in timescale/dives.

A bespoke instructor will be much less definite on timescale/dives, recognising that completion depends on student learning speed, without compromise on achievement standards.

Either that, or they'll quote the standard (i.e. bare minimum) but will state very clearly that course graduation is performance based and extra/remedial dives, or timescale extensions should be expected.

 

[newmanl]

Adding an observation to what @Bobby said (re: retention), I find it shocking there is a >2" stack of certification cards at my LDS that students never picked up..... is this partly due to the initial experience?

Interesting observation indeed. I had two co-workers take an O/W course, paid for by the company, and then both said they would never dive in the ocean again - only for work in (very) confined water. I asked why, and they responded that neither felt prepared to conduct o/w dives on their own. In this case, the initial experience was "bad enough" to deter them from ever gaining more o/w experience. However, the shop got their money and the agency got their numbers.

Even before I was actively teaching, I was proud to be part of an agency whose motto was (and still is) "Safety Through Education". Thankfully, the agency capitulated to market pressure with regard to O/W courses long after I stopped teaching, but maintains a higher standard (broadly defined) in advanced courses such as the leadership and technical specialties. I'd really like to say that the brand of instructor matters, but for O/W, it likely doesn't really matter that much. My wife took an O/W course, and I sat in - and aside from terrifying (for me), it did prepare me for what I would need to mentor her on.

I feel bad for the folks excited about trying scuba diving only to be disappointed by the actual experience of an O/W course. For the more motivated, there are ways to ensure a more positive outcome - as several here have suggested.

In terms of an agency, some are trying to mass-market scuba diving. However, I doubt it will ever have that kind of appeal - it is expensive, physically demanding, and requires some academic understanding of where you are and what you're doing, and commitment. Personally, I'm okay with the high drop-out rate - because if all those unclaimed C-cards were being put to regular use, I'd never get a parking spot at the dive site!

 

[northernone]

@boulderjohn hit the nail on the head for my opinion about anyone wanting to be a "real" scuba instructor taking at least educational psychology and science education classes at their local community college. No agency that I am aware of teaches their instructors how to actually teach, and frankly I don't think they care if they can or not.

I'll highlight this.

-my own side line comments -

A shake and bake dive instructor course to be a "professional" is laughable. Very few careers have such low entry requirements and it is no wonder we can not expect an agency's name to be the standard to measure a skilled instructor by.

In my opinion none of the agencies have standards remotely close to high enough to be remarkable in assuring a quality instructor.

Which is why I firmly believe when it comes to a quality dive training its not the agency it's the individual instructor.

Just like learning a musical instrument, shooting a gun, welding a bead or any other practical skill in life.

Regards,
Cameron

 

[CT-Rich]

That is not my experience at all. When working with young adults in high school, college sports teams and alumni relatives (Parents, Siblings) play a huge role in the decision of the number one choice for the majority of kids. The "backup" schools will usually be chosen based on acceptance rate, cost, and other decisions...

I people are erring here. Yes, you have some people that will worry about the school their parents went to or the teams they field, but in reality the vast majority of students will base there decisions on very mundane reasoning, how much is tuition? How far is it from home? My friends are going there. Is it a party school? What is the campus life like? The top ten percent are worried about the academic reputation, the other 90% are looking at a bunch of other factors. Go on a campus tour and let me know how much time they spend marketing anything about academics.

How you choose a driving school is much more realistic analogy to getting the initial certification. Those that pursue diving beyond AOW are the ones who are going to look for the right teacher, as you would expect from some one interested in deco, rescue, Fundies or cave. I may be wrong, I haven't been in a diving class in 30 years, but I took the class that was close to home and I could afford. I asked nothing about the instructor, he was a NAUI instructor and if I wanted, I could get cross certified by PADI. When I took my AI course in college, I worked with the instructor that did classes for the University. Because of my circumstances, that really was it. I know the instructors at my current shop and expected them to do a serviceable job getting my daughter certified,but ultimately, I knew it was what I did in the water with my daughter that would determine what type of diver she would be. Most choices of dive classes are going to be how well they are marketed and not how good the instructor is.

 

[seaseadee]

Second, I would argue that any student rating system is flawed from the very definition. If a student likes a professor, it's probably because, while they may have learned something, they liked them because they weren't challenged in the class.

This I disagree with. Since I was a kid loved to learn stuff. I've always known who the best teachers were. Not because the classes were easy, but because they made a light bulb go off in my head. Some of my favorite classes I got C's in. The other kids in my class also knew who the best teachers were.

Fast forward to college and I actually had first hand experience of a professor who was one of the best teachers I ever had was about to be fired because he didn't publish enough. I'd like to emphasize that the reason I thought he was an excellent teacher was because his teaching methods allowed me to see extremely complicated (for me) software engineering problems in the clearest of terms. A bunch of students at the school got up and raised Cain and he ended being hired and given tenure by another department.

--EDIT--
While I don't think any single rating on a "ratemyprofessor" type site is worth anything. I do believe that the aggregate rating is useful.

 

[TMHeimer]

I've read quite a few of those "rate the teacher" things. Some teachers get 5 stars from every student that posts, some get skunked. But quite a few get great reports from some and lousy ones from others. This last bunch points out that a "good" teacher can mean different things to different people. I often wonder how I would've fared, but these rating things came out shortly after I retired.

 

[2airishuman]

you don't see as many recreational instructors teaching for multiple agencies.

The exception would be instructors/shops at resort destinations. Many of them are affiliated with multiple agencies so that they can accept transfer students who completed their classroom and pool work someplace where it snows. It is not possible to take, say, the pool and classroom training from a NAUI shop and then receive a PADI C-card after taking only the open water dives from a PADI shop. As a result the tourist destination dive shops often have PADI, NAUI, and SSI affiliations. I think in some cases they have a PADi and e.g. NAUI student in the water at the same time.

 

[DevonDiver]

The exception would be instructors/shops at resort destinations. Many of them are affiliated with multiple agencies so that they can accept transfer students

I've never seen this, so it must be specific to a particular and unique 'resort area'.

The cost of multiple agency annual memberships, on a regular dive Instructor's income, would be ludicrous.

There always used to be a Universal Referral Program (URP) for inter-agency transfer. Not sure of the current status of that..
Universal Referral Program? Does It Still Exist?

 

[boulderjohn]

On one of my last resort area trips, I took a walk on the waterfront, just to see what the town looked like. For the entire stretch along the beach, every single building was a dive shop. Every single dive shop offered dive training. Every single training program was from the same agency.

If you wanted to work as a dive instructor in that area, with which agency would you choose to be affiliated? Why would you choose to spend the money to hold multiple certifications?