Specialty course/instructor quality?

[Jits Ronin]

Hi everyone,

I recently did my deep and wreck specialties and wasn't overly impressed with the training or what I took away from the courses. I was hoping I could get the group's views on whether my expectations are unrealistic or whether the instructor was sub-par.

My observations were:

1. Limited skills practice - for the deep course we practiced underwater DSMB deployment twice, so once per dive. That makes sense. But for the wreck course we only practiced laying a cross-wreck line once, with no repetition to practice the skill for improvement or retention.
2. Limited assessment of skills - while demonstrating our ability to lay lines, three of us did it simultaneously so it didn't seem like the instructor would have been able to pay attention to how we each started, created a station, or tied off the lines. No feedback was offered on the skill other than being told I performed it correctly. But I doubt that my first ever attempt was fault free.
3. No comment or correction on basic dive skills - during my advanced course the instructor was constantly telling me how I could refine my buoyancy and trim. During this course I received no such feedback to improve my general diving. I had a lot of trouble nailing my buoyancy on the last two dives and I was up and down way too much. When I asked about it the response I got was that my buoyancy was fine. I doubt that to be the case.
4. Sense of just ticking boxes - the whole experience felt like the instructor was just trying to meet the minimum standards for the courses and get us to pass rather than actually trying to make us better divers. I enrolled in the courses because I wanted to develop my basic skills as well as learning new skills to a reasonable standard and pick up the theoretical knowledge. But I couldn't escape the feeling that the instructor just wanted to push us through the courses. To his credit though, he did go above minimum requirements on the deep course and had us practice carrying a stage cylinder and switch to breathing from it.
5. Paying little attention to the students during dives - We did some decent swim-throughs on the wreck course, certainly requiring torches. At one stage one of the students swam hard to catch up to the instructor to tell him he was at 120 bar (agreed turnaround point) and shone his torch beam across the instructor's to get his attention, but he was unable to get his attention until we were out of the wreck. Again, from my advanced course I was used to the instructor being a lot more attentive and this seemed to be a much lower standard.

Sorry for the long post, but I don't feel experienced enough to make a proper assessment on these courses/the instructor.

Would love to hear your views.

 

[loosenit2]

I completed the deep specialty last fall and had similar feelings about the course. My assessment was that the instructor rarely did deep specialty courses and this was not as well versed in doing them as someone who has more repetitions. The instructor was also managing his NDL carefully because he was doing OW dives on the same day and thus was reluctant to go too deep for too long.

It is an often expressed sentiment on this board and other places that you are not hiring an agency but an instructor when you sign up for a class. I don’t disagree but have two concerns about the sentiment. 1 there is not a lot of tools out there for seeking out an instructor who matches criteria you are looking for, there is no online rating system that you can search to get info on instructors. 2. Agencies have a responsibility to ensure their representatives, instructors are qualified to commit n standards, something that it does not appear to me that do well right now.

I would love to see agencies adopt measures to address both shortcomings. 1 they should have agency sponsored student evaluations of their instructors. That will help them evaluate how well instructors are doing. They should also publish the number and type of classes that instructors are doing so that you can search for and find an instructor who does the class you are looking for frequently rather than infrequently. Agencies should also require periodic recertification of instructors (continuing education credits may be a reasonable and viable substitute) to ensure agency standards are being adhered too.

 

[decompression]

I’m guessing the Agency that this training was through......

For future reference, there are several agencies that offer their course standards online so you can see what you’ll be learning. Is a better way of choosing the courses you’d like.

Both these courses often leave students with a feeling of “that’s it?”.

Sadly, deep and wreck are very serious aspects to diving and should be very comprehensive and thorough.

Training for these should be researched to ensure the course content matches the expectations of the student, pick your courses wisely.

 

[lowviz]

IMHO, blame resides on both sides. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Some students just want a card because it gives them a pass. Some instructors have fallen into a "dunk and repeat" mentality. Other instructors are just feeding their own egos. Other instructors actually care.

Students: Be able to tell the differences among assessment, gratuitous instruction, proving to you how great they are, and real training/instruction. Stay in the sport long enough and you will experience all of them...

 

[MrBigfins]

Regardless of agency, even the one that gets bashed on here regularly, your impressions of minimal effort on part of the instructor seem to be on point. Our local LDS offers both of those specialties through PADI and luckily we have passionate and knowledgeable instructors. Linework for wreck is worked on top side to be able to discuss nuances and corrections. It is then worked on for 5 wreck dives as well, with feedback and discussion topside after completion. My main question is that if you were dissatisfied with one course from these instructors, why would you do a second one with them?

 

[lowviz]

My main question is that if you were dissatisfied with one course from these instructors, why would you do a second one with them?

Amen.

 

[BoltSnap]

It seems that you are saying the Wreck course was only two dives in total as I understand you. There is only so much you can do in two or three dives and it will be a common sense understanding that you can't do more than "check the list" type of training with this very low and inadequate number of dives. Same thing applies to the deep specialty. I teach the "Basic" NAUI wreck course, Wreck Survey, and do around 6 dives at least with the students (max four students). No "penetration" dives are allowed in this course. Again, it is impossible to cover all required skills and ensure that the student has reached proper mastery of these skill in just two dives and the expectation from the student that they will, is totally wrong.

The greater majority of these "specialty" courses done all over the world are just like your course, very superficial and don't cover what is required to be covered except at the very superficial level. Many of these courses are done as a "come and dive with me on a wreck" type of a deal. The student and the instructor are only interested in doing the absolute minimum so that the students get a c-card nothing more unfortunately.

 

[kmarks]

Regardless of agency, even the one that gets bashed on here regularly, your impressions of minimal effort on part of the instructor seem to be on point. Our local LDS offers both of those specialties through PADI and luckily we have passionate and knowledgeable instructors. Linework for wreck is worked on top side to be able to discuss nuances and corrections. It is then worked on for 5 wreck dives as well, with feedback and discussion topside after completion. My main question is that if you were dissatisfied with one course from these instructors, why would you do a second one with them?

Amen.

I did Deep Diver and Wreck Diver at the same time. These two are often sold as a combined package. When I did them, we did the classroom portions back to back on Thursday night, then went diving on Saturday and Sunday.

It seems that you are saying the Wreck course was only two dives in total as I understand you. There is only so much you can do in two or three dives and it will be a common sense understanding that you can't do more than "check the list" type of training with this very low and inadequate number of dives. Same thing applies to the deep specialty. I teach the "Basic" NAUI wreck course, Wreck Survey, and do around 6 dives at least with the students (max four students). No "penetration" dives are allowed in this course. Again, it is impossible to cover all required skills and ensure that the student has reached proper mastery of these skill in just two dives and the expectation from the student that they will, is totally wrong.

The greater majority of these "specialty" courses done all over the world are just like your course, very superficial and don't cover what is required to be covered except at the very superficial level. Many of these courses are done as a "come and dive with me on a wreck" type of a deal. The student and the instructor are only interested in doing the absolute minimum so that the students get a c-card nothing more unfortunately.

We don't know what training agency @Jits Ronin was with, but SSI requires a minimum of two dives for Wreck Diver and three dives for Deep Diver. Instructors can combine dives as long as the total number of specialty programs being combined (N) is one less than the total number of dives completed (N+1). When combining Deep Diver with another specialty, SSI is a little unsure what they think. In the general standards, you are required to do at least three dives to at least 20 m, even though under the standards for Deep Diver it says that it requires 3 dives to at least 18 m whether combined or not. As long as you find a wreck that is at least 18 (20) m deep, you can dive to it twice, and then do another 18 (20) m dive and call it good.

These are just the minimum standards and most instructors won't do more than the minimum. Sure, the best instructors will do more training, but they won't get paid more for it. And just like Open Water doesn't teach you everything, I don't think we can expect any specialty courses to cover everything. But they should give you enough to go out on your own and learn more. A lot of people say OWD is a license to learn to scuba dive, not evidence of mastery, and I think that goes for any specialty course. Nobody is going to master buoyancy in a single pool session.

To paraphrase Office Space, "You know what, Stan, if you want me to do 37 training dives, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 training dives?"

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

What agency? As it is outside of standards to deploy DSMBs in a deep course. Taking that out, your experience is very close to mine where I trained with a number of agencies (mostly PADI and SSI). Lots of tick boxes, nothing really learned. My one exception was taking PADI sidemount with an instructor who was a cave diver and a GUE background.

 

[TMHeimer]

I did Deep Diver and Wreck Diver at the same time. These two are often sold as a combined package. When I did them, we did the classroom portions back to back on Thursday night, then went diving on Saturday and Sunday.



We don't know what training agency @Jits Ronin was with, but SSI requires a minimum of two dives for Wreck Diver and three dives for Deep Diver. Instructors can combine dives as long as the total number of specialty programs being combined (N) is one less than the total number of dives completed (N+1). When combining Deep Diver with another specialty, SSI is a little unsure what they think. In the general standards, you are required to do at least three dives to at least 20 m, even though under the standards for Deep Diver it says that it requires 3 dives to at least 18 m whether combined or not. As long as you find a wreck that is at least 18 (20) m deep, you can dive to it twice, and then do another 18 (20) m dive and call it good.

These are just the minimum standards and most instructors won't do more than the minimum. Sure, the best instructors will do more training, but they won't get paid more for it. And just like Open Water doesn't teach you everything, I don't think we can expect any specialty courses to cover everything. But they should give you enough to go out on your own and learn more. A lot of people say OWD is a license to learn to scuba dive, not evidence of mastery, and I think that goes for any specialty course. Nobody is going to master buoyancy in a single pool session.

To paraphrase Office Space, "You know what, Stan, if you want me to do 37 training dives, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 training dives?"

Agree that no course will cover everything that's worth knowing. On the PADI Deep & Wreck courses I took (2 different shops/instructors/countries) I THINK the required minimums were covered (it was a long time ago). I also recall that on each course there was some added stuff that I don't think was in the manual. I imagine that varies a lot with instructor.
Same with today's OW course. You'll spend the first year after thinking "why didn't he mention that little trick"?