The “That 70s Show”
Approach to Diver Training
If there is one thing that scares me about entry-level diver training, it’s how little it’s changed since I first started teaching in the mid 1970s. Perhaps the most noticeable difference in the past 30 years is that consumers are willing to give us less time than ever to teach them to dive. Despite this, a surprising number of dive stores still refuse to embrace technologies that would enable them to use the time they do have with students more effectively. Here are some specific examples:
The Little Red Schoolhouse: Academic learning in a state-of-the-art 1970s scuba course would typically revolve around a textbook that students read prior to class, several formal classroom lectures and a final exam. Frequently, the information covered in the text, discussed during lectures and tested on the final exam wouldn’t match.
By the 1980s, things had improved. Students might have a video and study guide to go with their textbooks, and the instructor might have slides he could use to facilitate his lecture. Most importantly, there was a greater likelihood that the information in the textbook, study guide, video, slide show, lecture and final exam would at least be consistent with one another.
Since the 1980s, instructional technologies have advanced significantly — but you wouldn’t know it to look at some dive stores. For example:
- There are still stores where the highest level of sophistication students see is the textbook they read and the 35mm slides the instructor uses to conduct lectures (assuming he even does that much).
- Many stores still treat students as though they are incapable of learning anywhere but in a classroom setting. This translates into hours of boring lectures — and, worse, it means that precious classroom time that could have been used to more effectively promote continuing education, equipment sales and dive travel, is being used instead to cover material students could easily master on their own, if given the right materials.
- In general aviation, the traditional “ground school” has long since been replaced by computer-aided learning materials and other sophisticated forms of self study. In recreational diving, however, only two agencies (PADI and SDI) make such materials available to students.
The good news is that a number of dive stores have installed LCD projectors and PCs or laptops in their classrooms and are making use of Power Point-based materials in their academic teaching presentations (for a good example of how to do this more effectively, see this article). Unfortunately, there are still many dive stores that lack even this level of sophistication — and their students suffer for it.
Why bother teaching with modern dive equipment? »
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