Padi online

[OceanEd]

Kevin:

It is an interesting situation. On the one hand PADI requires that all students going through courses, EXCEPT when they take a course online, must purchase their PADI manual. They cannot be loaned a book for the course. The reason given is that students must be able to have access to their books at all times.

I had been talking to them and they said that if we "libraried" the books for our courses (which means that if we gave students their books and then got them back at the end of the course) then the students would not have access to come back in and reference the books 24 hours a day because we closed at night.

Now, with the some of the newer online courses they are putting term limits on people's ability to "reference" their books online. I see a big disparity here. At the DEMA show this year there was a problem at one of the seminars when we were told that online materials could only be referenced for a certain amount of time and if people did not finish within that timeframe they would have to pay to reference them again. PADI said they would study this and get back to us.

So at present there is a disparity in their policy between books that are read and books that are paid for online.

 

[kevinl4270]

They (PADI) actually sent me a pretty good email reply last night. The gist of it was that they are looking into their pricing policy on the online courses. I guess several people have brought the same things to their attention.
Not sure if anything will change, but for now I am going to stick with doing all the course work on site with a dive instructor. Hopefully PADI can figure out an equitable solution to this.

 

[DiveMonkeyEZ]

I have nothing against the online teaching of course materials, as long as the skills and tests are done in person. I think it might lead to more poor divers in the water if this newer trend takes on alife of its own. I think i fear that the agencies might get overly liberal in their policies based on consumer demand down the road. Something to keep an eye on.

 

[clint@uniquescuba.com]

You MUST buy a book because they are a PUBLISHING COMPANY and their primary business model revolves around selling dead tree's.