If you read through many of the online scuba diving forums, you’ll probably have noticed that there are a number of similar questions from new divers, or those considering becoming scuba divers. That questions is which training agency should they use? If you are a regular reader here, you’ll know my opinion on the subject. Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the training agency was a big factor.

There are a number of training agencies out there. I’m sure there’s more, but here’s a quick run down of a few of the biggest.

• PADI – PADI is the largest agency out there in terms of volume (i.e number of instructors, certified divers, etc.). PADI is based out of California, but originally was founded in Chicago (the real hot bed for scuba diving). PADI became the largest by doing more marketing and advertising than the other agencies.
• International Training (IT) – IT is made up of SDI, TDI & ERDI. SDI came about after a bunch of technical divers formed TDI (for tech training) and wanted to train recreational divers. SDI is strong in the northeast United States, but is gradually becoming larger though the midwest.
• NAUI – I don’t know a lot about NAUI. In the Chicago area, we had one NAUI shop, but I don’t think they are in business anymore or may have moved to another agency.
• SSI – Scuba Schools International (SSI) is slowing gaining some market share. When I first became an instructor, the shop I worked for was a SSI shop but was transitioning to PADI. Which was why they brought me in.
• GUE & UTD – These are two different training agencies. GUE is a non-profit while UTD is a for profit organization. The history between GUE and UTD is complicated, but came out of the DIR/Florida cave diving area.

With all of the agencies out there, which one should you pick? The answer really boils down to the evaluation of one aspect of the training agency. How a training agency trains it’s instructors will give you the best evaluation of the agency.

Why is this important? Because, this is what sets the culture for instructors to teach to and lays the foundation for instructor (and eventually student) performance. Most instructors will teach their classes in the same manner as how they were taught, including instructor training courses. If the classes they had as students were very easy, short cuts taken, etc; then they will most likely teach their classes in the same manner. This is one reason why I’ve rejected the micro-teaching that is taught by PADI.

The instructor training courses need to be difficult, in terms of diving performance. Instructor candidates should be pushed to their limits of diving performance and knowledge. By doing this, instructor candidates will know their limitations and can work on improvement prior to becoming certified to teach students. This also means instructor candidates will be more inclined to push their students to perform better.

If an instructor goes through a very rigorous instructor training program, they will develop more empathy for their students who may also go through a rigorous student course. I remember talking to my GUE Fundamentals instructor Brandon. I joked with him about his enjoyment of watching us fumble around during the class. He said he didn’t enjoy it at all, but he could relate to my frustrations as he went through the same thing. He probably had it even worse for his higher level GUE classes. Empathy is a critical skill for scuba diving instructors to have.

So, the 10 million dollar question is, “How can the prospective scuba diver know how well instructors are trained?” This is a very tricky thing to do and it requires a little bit of thought on the part of the prospective scuba diver. All of the training agencies I listed above put their instructor outlines on their respective web sites. By going through these high level outlines, one can gauge the culture of the training agency.

For example, when you go through these course descriptions, there should be performance requirements that instructor candidates must live up to. There should also be a grading scale and what is the minimum score that the instructor candidate must earn prior to moving onto the next level of instructor training. This will give you an idea of what an instructor must go through to finally get their teaching c-card.

It’s not an easy task when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. This is why people really need to slow down and think about the diving education they want to receive rather than simply jump in the water and blow bubbles. Taking your time and research the training agency and instructor (more so the instructor) will help ensure that you get a great scuba diving class and lay the foundation for years of enjoyment of the underwater world.

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.