It was only a couple of years ago that I felt something was missing. I believed I was on the right track with my scuba diving instruction. After all I was teaching my scuba diving students to perform skills while neutrally buoyant, asking (OK, forcing) them to a higher level of performance. I thought I was doing things that no other instructor in the Chicago (and probably Midwest) area was doing. But some thing just didn’t feel right. It was difficult to hear what that nagging little voice in my mind was saying. I finally realized what was nagging at me. I was failing.

The thing that donned on me the most was that, in the end, I was teaching all the same stuff that everyone else was teaching. All of my students could perform the skills just like students from other instructors. I wasn’t doing anything substantial to really set myself apart from the crowd. So I set out with a seemingly impossible goal, to re-invent scuba dive training.

To understand what I’m talking about, first let me share with you why I feel that the current methods of teaching scuba diving are failing. Not only are they are failing the students, but the scuba diving industry as well.

It doesn’t have much to do with course content or even how classes are taught. It has everything to do with the learning outcomes of these classes. You see, all training agencies require the same learning outcomes of their classes. Every single instructor out there teaches to the same learning outcomes, skill mechanics. For example, you will remove, replace and clear your mask is an outcome.

This isn’t enough. For divers to maximize safety, fun and to keep diving, divers must also be taught how to think when underwater. Solving problems while underwater doesn’t only involve skill mechanics, the brain must be used as well.

What needs to be the outcome of scuba classes should be critical thinking. The great thing about teaching critical thinking is that the skills, and their mechanics, are taught as a result. The key must be that critical thinking should be taught first, then the skill mechanics will fall into place. That’s the great part about teaching critical thinking, thinking and skills can’t be separated.

This is why current methods of teaching scuba diving are failing. Skills are the only thing being taught, thus eliminating the thinking aspect of learning. Skills taught in isolation do little more than prepare students for tests of isolated skills (Spache and Spache, 1986). That is, if you teach students individual skills, they will fail to see the big picture after the class is over.

Why are only skill mechanics the primary learning objectives taught in scuba diving classes? The reason is rather simple. Teaching critical thinking is hard. Even for professional educators, it takes a lot of study and practice to get it right. Current instructor development courses are so “streamlined”, that the focus isn’t on how to develop divers. It’s easy to teach people to perform a skill once or twice and then evaluate their performance. When teaching thinking, the learning objectives include application of material, organization and judgment. Then we can assess the student for true mastery of the material, including skill sets.

References
Spache, G.D., and Spache, E.B. Reading in the Elementary School. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1986.

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris. Photo by Satyakamk (Wikimedia Commons)

You already know how this article is going to start don’t you? Just look at the title. You know how this is going to progress. Recently, I was teaching a class at my local quarry. We were on a sunken house boat getting ready to work on some skills and scenarios. We had already ran some line around the boat for my students to use. All of a sudden, about a dozen divers shot down upon us like lightning bolts thrown by Zeus himself. Looks like another Advanced Open Water class, wreck dive had just begun.

They just kept coming. A couple landed in the muck. One landed, straddling the railing. A couple more actually landed on top of the shipwreck, then continued to walk across it. Don’t believe me? The picture above was taken off video I took during the class I was teaching. Hopefully you can distinguish my student from the rest.

If you are a regular reader, you’ll know that I write about a lot of these situations. You might be thinking that I’m making them up. Trust me, I’m not. You may be thinking that this is just a random occurrence. Trust me, it happens all the time. Just come dive with me at my local quarry and you’ll see it. It’s not just coming from one dive store, it’s all of them. On any given weekend, at least one class from any of the Chicago area dive stores ends up doing this kind of stuff. You can tell by the bumper stickers each dive store puts on their gear.

While my class hovered there, waiting for the shit storm to pass us by, I started to think about these divers and what makes them feel that this behavior is acceptable.

It’s not totally their fault. I mean, most new divers (and even experienced divers) do not know about what makes a good diver. At some point, an instructor signed off on their open water certifications. Someone believed that these divers had met the minimum standards to be certified scuba divers.

I can’t fault these people because they are only diving to the level of performance that their initial instructor(s) had set. This is where the problem lies. At no point during their initial training, did their instructors say that they had to perform like this (what ever this may be).

Those students may have been able to hover for 30 seconds, clear their masks and all of the other skills required to pass the open water class. They were never asked to do more. They were never shown what good underwater behavior looks like.

Who do I blame for this? In the past I used to place the blame on the dive stores. However, the more I see these classes, the more I realize that the blame for a student’s shortcoming falls upon the instructors. Not all of the blame should go on the instructor. You do have the culture that gets set by the training agencies and dive stores as well as just plain lazy students who don’t give a shit.

The culture of mediocrity has to change. These instructors and dive stores who train to the lowest level of performance don’t realize the possible damage their students are doing to our aquatic world. They might as well club some seals or kill some whales. Accepting bad buoyancy will only kill our coral reefs and destroy our historic shipwrecks.

Why do people continue to enroll in these types of classes? Are they really happy with the results?

I recently popped my head into an online PADI instructor forum. There was a discussion about online courses. It seems, many of the instructors (and dive store owners) were loving these classes. The consensus that I read into the discussion was that those who favored the online courses, liked them because the reduced their work load when teaching the course. I’m not a fan of online scuba classes and I feel they will hurt the scuba diving education business.

Keeping true to my PADI beginnings, let me start off with some of the things I like about using the Internet with scuba diving courses. I feel that the Internet should be used to supplement the classroom portion of the class. Having some kind of online knowledge pool will help enhance a student’s education in the classroom. However, Internet usage should not be a replacement for classroom learning.

What do I dislike about online classes? You guessed it, everything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against home learning. However, instructors bring so much more than just reading off of PowerPoint slides. For example, in the open water class, there is a section about the aquatic environment. This includes currents, tides, etc. My friends in the Seattle area have to take into consideration tidal conditions when they go diving. They have to know how to read tidal forecasts, the times the tide come in and goes out, etc. This is knowledge that is specific to their area. You won’t get that with a general PowerPoint presentation.

In the open water course I teach, I have added a section in the classroom dedicated to local diving. I show videos of our training quarry, diving in Lake Michigan and us hanging out at dive sites. It’s important for me to show my students what local diving will be like when they get out and start diving. This way, when they move out of the clear pool (with 100+ feet of viz) into the quarry (with less than 10 feet of viz), they are not as nervous. It also helps me, subtly, to promote continuing education classes and local dive operators without sounding like a salesman.

Online scuba classes have been advertised as a way to get the classroom portion done quicker. The truth is, it really doesn’t save you any time. Many students, when they get to the pool section of the class, have forgotten much of what was taught online. Then the instructor, assuming they actually care, has to remediate and re-teach some of the things the student should have already learned at the pool. Thus, consuming much needed pool time and perhaps requiring additional pool time just to make up for what was missed while re-teaching classroom stuff.

The biggest thing that I dislike about online scuba courses is the fact that they can breed mediocrity. From lazy students, to lazy instructors, to lazy dive store owners. Online classes can allow the instructor/store to offer a bare minimum in terms of classroom knowledge. Then charge a premium. You simply show up, go over your knowledge reviews, take the final exam and leave.

In a time when the cheaper and faster mindset is dominating the scuba industry, online classes can give unsavory people the tools to perform a cashectomy on your wallet. Some people will play into the misnomer that instant gratification in scuba diving classes is just as safe as taking your time and earning something. They are wrong!!!

An instructor, even a bad instructor, can share a passion and excitement about scuba diving that you won’t get with a PowerPoint.

Have you taken an online scuba class? Are you a dive store owner offering them? I’d love to hear you opinions.

I was chatting with a new diver. He was concerned that his bad buoyancy control was causing him to be an unsafe scuba diver. He has a legitimate concern and this should be a concern for all new divers. While we should expect new divers to struggle slightly to get control over their buoyancy, the truth is that any diver who does not have good buoyancy control IS an unsafe diver.

Let me tell you a story to reinforce what I’m talking about. Many of you have read that my trimix course was anything less than stellar. Actually, I was a train wreck in that class (but I still passed). We had just done a dive to 180 feet. We reached 20 feet to switch off 50% Nitrox and onto pure oxygen. I switched first, while holding onto the line nonetheless. After I switched, I signaled my the other guy in the class to switch. The bolt snap holding his O2 bottle to the hip d-ring was ran up through the bend in the hose and he couldn’t deploy the regulator. Thinking I was a phenomenal team diver, I swam over, unclipped the tail of the bottle to free the bolt snap. Of course I had no situational awareness whatsoever. The duration of unclipping the bolt snap took about five minutes. In that time we dropped from 20 feet to about 45 feet. Keep in mind, I was breathing pure oxygen with a maximum operating depth of only 20 feet. I’m lucky I didn’t tox.

The point of that story was that I jeopardized my own safety and the safety of my team because I couldn’t manage my buoyancy. Therefore, I was a very unsafe diver and had no business doing dives at those levels.

How about the recreational diver? If the recreational diver has difficulty maintaining a constant depth, even when swimming, then how can they react quickly enough if their buddy has an emergency? How much time will actually pass before they realize their buddy has a problem?

Many people, myself included, learned to do air shares while kneeling on a platform. Heck, even during my PADI IDC and IE this skill was performed on my knees. This has quickly become my biggest pet peeve when I see instructors teaching air shares this way for open water dives. I know that those students are beginning their diving career with a disadvantage.

In my opinion, a good diver’s buoyancy can be measured by a five foot window from the target depth. Five feet is still close enough that you could respond to you buddy (or get to your buddy) if an emergency arises. If you are a new diver, or a old diver returning to the sport, you may find yourself out of this buoyancy window.

Fear not as you can improve. If you have a willingness to learn and improve, you are on your way to removing that mark of an unsafe diver. While you are working on improvement, you need to keep it in the back of your mind, that buoyancy control just isn’t for not kicking up silt. It’s about being a safe diver.

Don’t let this get you down, we have all been there. The willingness to improve is far superior of an attitude than just ignoring the problem all together.

During the spring and summer months, I get around one to three phone calls and emails from people wanting to learn to scuba dive. While I tell them about my open water course in detail, the number of people who actually reply or sign up for the class has been zero, at least in the past year. While I attribute this failure rate mostly due to the high price of my class, I also believe that many people seeking scuba diving instruction don’t know the subtle differences when dealing with an independent scuba instructor versus a dive store.

When I left the dive stores and began teaching on my own, I tried keeping the same business model that dive stores had. After all, it was working for the dive stores. They were getting a lot of students signing up for classes, so it should work for me right? Wrong!!!! There are significant differences between independent instructors and dive stores when doing business. Here are some of those areas that people seeking scuba diving classes should consider when talking with an independent instructor.

Pricing

Whether I like it or not, price plays a huge factor when people look for scuba classes. In my example, my open water class runs close to $1,000. The dive store down the street from me runs the class for $350. That’s a significant price difference. But what prospective students should keep in mind is that independents have higher costs than the dive store. For example, just to rent equipment to run an open water class can cost $200 or more. Not to mention paying for pool time, etc.

People seeking scuba classes should weight the pros and cons of independents and dive stores when evaluating price. Independent scuba instructors typically will have smaller classes. I cap my classes at four people. I reduce this number for classes such as wreck, ice, deep, advanced wreck and Advanced Nitrox / Deco Procedures. The reason why I reduce the number of people I take into those classes is because the more people, the more difficult it is to maintain control (and safety). Especially given the hard and soft overhead environments those classes require. Less students in the class means there will be more face time with the instructor. More direct interaction with an instructor means you will learn more.

The policies that independent instructors will have regarding pricing will be different than dive stores. When you go to the dive stores, you pay your money and schedule a class. With independents, you will most likely be required to put down a deposit to hold your spot on the calendar.

I have a couple of reasons why I require a deposit. First, I’ve been burned by many people when initially setting up a class. I’ll go ahead and put it on my calendar and move other things in my life around. Then if someone cancels, and doesn’t sign back up, I can get screwed without a deposit. Independent instructors, like myself, may have other jobs or interests. If I schedule time away from my “regular” job in order to teach a scuba class, and someone bails on the class, then I make zero dollars. Then I have to explain it to my wife when I have no income for the weekend when I could have made some money working at the in-laws business. Second, at least with a deposit, I have something to show for my efforts in trying to set up a class. Depending on the class, I may have to find dive boat charters, hotels, travel arrangements, etc. This is why my deposit is non-refundable.

Prospective students need to realize that independent scuba instructors cannot compete with the dive stores based on price. Independent instructors would be wiped out if they were to compete with dive stores solely based on price. You must consider the other tangible benefits between independent instructors and the dive stores.

Schedule Flexibility

Dive stores do have the benefit of being more flexible when scheduling classes. They have an army of instructors who can jump in quickly and teach a class. Independent scuba instructors are an army of one. They may already have something scheduled during the time you want to take your scuba class.

When dealing with independent scuba instructors, you should try and be as flexible with your schedule as possible. There are times when independents just can’t offer a class. For example, if I were to schedule anything scuba related during Mother’s Day weekend, I’ll be divorced within 24 hours.

You will find that most independent instructors will bend over backwards when trying to schedule your scuba class. You just need to keep it in the back of your mind, that the instructor is just one person and has other classes to teach. So you may not get your ideal dates for your scuba class, but you will need to weight the other tangible benefits of going with an independent instructor versus a dive store.

In many cases, I get a lot of calls and emails where people request a scuba class just weeks (if not days) before a trip they are taking. Prospective students need to realize that a quality education may take some time.

Summary

While I’m not trying to sway people from taking classes from a dive store or independent instructor, they just need to realize that there are some differences when dealing with the two. The independent instructor may ask you to do things differently than the dive store, in regards to price and schedule that is.

Don’t be afraid to ask why an independent instructor is doing something. Trust me, you won’t offend an instructor if you question why his/her pricing policy is the way it is or why the class price is so high. I actually get more offended when people make assumptions about my pricing and schedule policies and DON’T ask questions.

I encourage everyone to consider both dive stores and independent instructors when looking for their scuba classes. After all, your scuba diving class should be an investment in your safety and enjoyment of scuba diving.