Frustration moving into/towards tech

Last week I deleted GUE as a Keyword on Scubaboard, all of a sudden I have a ALOT less threads in my inbox. It's liberating. Mu more time for diving.

 

Probably not with those clips, it's just one of those gear specs that are non-negotiable.

However if your buddy can get in and out of a continuous harness with assistance, it can be possible to make arrangements around it.

In my Cave 1 class, my buddy came with an occupational neck injury, and the doctor's advice was to avoid walking up or down steps while wearing a heavy load. So our instructor carried the tanks to the water's edge every day... for 5 days. Then on our 2 days of post-course dives together I carried them - it left me pretty beat!

 

@jlcnuke

Your thoughts on pass/fail rate being the outcome that separates quality training from crap training seems to be flawed in my humble opinion. With Kirkpatrick's Taxonomy on Evaluating Training Programs in mind, I want to focus my evaluation of dive training at the Behavioral and Results level. Did the skills of the diver taking fundies improve (Behavioral). Were they able to apply those new skills/improved skills to the real diving world to be an improved/safer diver or to be successful and safe moving on to technical diving/tech classes (Results). Having taken Fundies, I believe it was successful when looked at through those two lenses.

Just my thoughts.

- Ryan

 

You're missing an important distinction between what you're trying to say, and what I said. I said the training PROGRAM was poorly designed. You're saying the course, including you, the instructor, their work, AND the program itself ALL combined was effective at giving you skills or improving your skills. Those are two completely different things.

As I understand it (and I could have heard wrong, but either way it's a good illustration of my point here), PADI's original self-reliant course was effectively "here's an outline, instructor go teach them to be self-reliant". That's a terribly designed course. It doesn't mean that between the student, the instructor, the terribly designed course, and whatever else they may have utilized that the training couldn't be very effective. A badly designed course does not have to equate to "completely ineffective training". I can take a terribly designed car (missing basic safety features like ABS and airbags, with or without shocks, etc for instance) and use it to teach someone to become an excellent driver - that doesn't mean the car was well-designed, it means the training as a whole was effective in-spite of the poor design of the car (not a perfect analogy, but good enough I think). Similarly, a decent or good instructor can take a poorly designed course and often do wonders with it. Do you see the distinction between the quality of the training (as a whole) and the quality of the program's design?

Either way, I won't be taking the course with GUE anyway, and my professional opinion (or maybe anyone else's opinion) about their course design isn't something I expect anyone else to do anything about.

 

It seems to me throughout this thread, the points you've been hung up on the most are the pass/fail rate and the rigidity of the gear. I'm not sure how those relate to your PADI analogy of here's an outline, now go teach it or why you think GUE employs a similar methodology to course design. It's interesting to me that you talk about the training program design without having taken the course or without talking to an instructor. If everyone's consistently saying that the course is great at improving their skills and/or getting them ready for tec diving and allows them to dive more safely as a buddy team after the course (Kirkpatrick's Behavioral/Results Levels), then maybe the course design is good...

Good luck finding an instructor/training program that fits what you're looking for. My best advice to you would be to keep an open mind and realize you might struggle some as the skill set needed for this level of diving is difficult and usually well beyond that of an average open water/recreational diver.

- Ryan

 

it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback which is what he’s doing. It’s also very very obvious he has preconceived notions and a dislike for gue divers. If he took a course or really knew what he was talking about from personal experience maybe he’d have a decent argument. Unfortunately he’s making opinions based on reading a syllabus. I could do the same thing with my college courses but in reality the actual course was always very different than the syllabus led on.

 

What you are saying is not necessarily related to the quality of the program, at least, from what I understood.

The training does not include only the course, but instructors and students as well.

Put them all together, and Fundies is probably one of the best solutions on the market for skills improvements, which is what you are saying, and @jlcnuke didn't say anything opposite to this as far as I remember. But this does not mean that the course design is good, impossible to improve, or appropriate for everyone.

P.S. However, in my opinion, considering what people said here about a program that is well designed... fundies is even better than what I thought

 

Here's the thing that people need to understand.

Proper training/significant skills improvement is the norm for DIR agencies. Exceptions exist where some instructor sucks, students have a skills drop off quickly after a course.

Improper training/slight skills improvement is the norm for mainstream agencies. Exceptions exist where some instructors are rock stars, and students come away with ingrained, vastly improved skills.

And I say this as someone who will never be a DIR instructor, but a mainstream one. Not a rock start either, but not totally sucky either. Just being honest about myself and the industry. My mentors have been a mix of rock star mainstream instructors and DIR ones.

 

Most divers I know who went for a fundies (or similar from other agencies) class didn't do it to pass with flying colors and move onto the tech courses.
They did it to develop a solid foundation and become better divers, and all of them fulfilled that goal during the course whether they got a rec pass, tech pass or a provisional.
They understood that what you are paying for isn't a certification, you are paying for training.
If you got some of the basics and put in your best work you might get a cert in the end, but that is not what fundies is about IMO.
It's about becoming a better diver, and I seriously doubt there is anyone (who isn't a complete tosspot) who didn't come out of fundies a better diver, pass or not.