The trainers and trainee were under SDI which was precisely why I asked here. I started off with PADI and then got to know this dive shop owner who's under SDI so my professional qualifications will probably be SDI too..
You did not answer my question. You said:
Quote Originally Posted by Progen View Post
That's was what I had in mind plus (I sense a lot of flames coming my way) the way I look at it, the reason why there are hundreds of thousands of inept divers worldwide is because they thought that being able to perform a skill once, kneeling down, just after a demonstration and which they were prepared for, would mean that they were ready to go anywhere in the world and not need to worry about anything.
I asked you to identify the agencies that are certifying hundreds of thousands of inept divers worldwide while only requiring them to perform a skill (like mask clearing) once kneeling down. Which ones teach them students that after doing skills kneeling down in the pool "they can go anywhere in the world and not need to worry about anything"?
I figure that if you can make specific accusations like this, they must be grounded in some kind of fact. I'm just asking you to identify the
specific facts upon which you are basing your accusations.
---------- Post added January 19th, 2014 at 11:22 AM ----------
I have been thinking about this thread a bit, and I thought I would add information related to the issue of having students repeat skills after competence and the matter of time. I have two points to make.
Remember that we are not talking in this thread about rushing students through the class if they have not shown ability. If there is any question about a student's competence in performing a skill, it should be repeated until the student appears to be competent. The OP talked about a situation in which a person learning to be an instructor was cautioned against asking a student to "repeat skills which she seemed to be able to demonstrate reasonably well," and the reason had to do with teaching larger classes.
How much money is that time?
The reason had to do with the fact that "time is money." If you are talking about clearing a mask, it isn't a lot of extra time, but many of the skills take much, much longer. The alternate air swim, for example, take a couple of minutes per student. Removing and replacing the scuba unit takes quite some time as well. The RSTC minimum standards that SDI has pledged to follow contain 20 such skills, and I would take a wild guess that asking ONE student to repeat each skill after they have completed it will add
at least a half hour per student to the course, probably more.
If you are talking about 1 or 2 students, that is not a big deal, and it becomes a good incentive to pay the extra money for private instruction. On the other hand, if you have a class of 8 students, that comes to
at least 4 hours. It also means in all practical terms, another day at the pool. A four hour pool session is pretty tiring for students, and you are asking a lot to add that time to existing schedules.
So what does that mean in terms of cost? In our area, the only pools you can rent are at the local recreation center. The one we use charges us $24 per hour per lane. For a class of 8, we would use 4 lanes. So that's 4 hours times 4 lanes times $24 = $384 additional dollars, all for the purpose of giving students extra practice on something they have already shown they can do well. That is just the pool cost. The instructor will also be working 4 extra hours, and we will always have a DM for a class that large. I suspect that they will want to be paid extra for that extra work. Remember that if you are renting pool time outside the shop, that means the two of them will need to come earlier to transfer all the equipment to the pool rental area, and they will have to stay late to bring it all back. There are different pay structures for this, but for the sake of argument, let's say you are paying them only roughly minimum wage. That's about another $100 for the class. If you are paying more than minimum wage, it will be more. If you are an independent, then you are paying yourself that money, or you are doing all of that for free.
So, to go back to the main argument, in which the instructor-to-be was told that if there is a large class it could add a lot of cost to the class, then we can see that the cost could be about $60 per student extra, just for the confined water portion of the class. For an 8 person class with pool sessions lasting about a weekend, that is close to $500 for the weekend. If you teach two such classes a month, that is a $12,000 hit on the bottom line, whether you are an independent or a shop owner.
How does that impact diver competence?
When you talk about all these incompetent divers around the world, are you talking about people who have trouble clearing their masks, recovering lost regulators, switching from snorkel to regulator, performing tired diver tows, relieving cramps, removing their weight belts on the surface, removing scuba units on the surface, doing deep water exits, disconnecting inflator hoses, swimming with a mask, etc.? I doubt it. When I think of poor divers I have seen on dive trips, I think of people with poor buoyancy control, improper weighting, and bad trim. I see people who do not feel confident swimming in control during the dive. Those are not the skills you are talking about when you have students repeat skills they have already mastered.
How do we teach that in the confined water sessions?
By having them swim. IMO, the most valuable time spent in confined water is the time spent just swimming around next to your buddy, getting the feel of neutral buoyancy and trim, learning how to use breath to control changes in depth, practicing kicking technique, and just plain getting comfortable in the water. When students are free swimming, I have them give unexpected out of air signals to their buddies, so they can practice it in a more realistic setting. I have them ask each other for their air pressure as well. The more time I have students do this, the more competent and confident they are when the confined water class is over.
How much time do we spend on that? It depends. When I go to the pool with students, I have a certain number of hour scheduled. I get a certain number of lanes for a certain number of hours each day. I can't go in the water before that, and I can't stay a minute later than that. I watch the time carefully, and my students are climbing a ladder on the side of the pool for a deep water exit at the very last minute available to us each day. I milk every second out of the schedule. I accomplish that by adjusting the time I spend on free swimming, which depends upon how much time I spend on the required skills. The more time it takes me to complete those skills, the less time is left for free swimming.
Every minute I spend having students repeat specific skills that they have already shown they can do well is a minute they are not able to work on buoyancy, trim, buddy skills, and overall comfort. Every minute spent having students repeat skills needlessly is a minute they don't get to practice those critical skills in a true swimming situation.
In other words, the more time you spend having students repeat skills needlessly, the less time you have to do the work that really makes a difference in diver competence.
