Your Thoughts
Bubski
Edited by Bubble2Bubble, 16 February 2008 - 11:58 AM.
Posted 16 February 2008 - 11:53 AM
Edited by Bubble2Bubble, 16 February 2008 - 11:58 AM.
Posted 16 February 2008 - 07:09 PM
Posted 16 February 2008 - 07:49 PM
Edited by Parrotman, 16 February 2008 - 07:54 PM.
Posted 16 February 2008 - 07:59 PM
Posted 16 February 2008 - 08:37 PM
Posted 17 February 2008 - 09:34 AM
Edited by JimG, 17 February 2008 - 09:35 AM.
Posted 17 February 2008 - 10:02 AM
Posted 17 February 2008 - 10:24 AM
You had a lousy course given by a lousy instructor. I was going to say "taught by" but that's hardly appropriate in this case. IMO the PADI manual has been so degraded over the years that it now doesn't come close to the minimum needed, and when I'm teaching Nitrox for any agency I use a combination of sources. I've actually decided to write my own manual as there's nothing out there that I've seen that passes muster.I gotta say that the money they charge for this course is out of line. Watch a 30 minute CD, read a few chapters in a book and take a quiz. This certification should cost about $35 rather than the $100+ depending on where your getting the training. ..... I spent a total of 15 minutes with an instructor on this course and 5 of those were filling out the paperwork to get my C card.
Edited by peterbj7, 17 February 2008 - 10:32 AM.
Posted 17 February 2008 - 11:13 AM
Time on earth is precious, time underwater even more so. Live life one day at a time. Dive your @$$ off!!!
Posted 17 February 2008 - 12:20 PM
PADI and several other agencies teach you to "know" and "remember" the important aspects of nitrox diving, such as the various computations. I suppose they're not to be criticised as that is the way most kids are taught in schools and even many universities these days. Within at most a few months all that is forgotten. Still worse, the complicated and seemingly arbitrary formulae that you're expected to remember are often mis-remembered and wholly incorrect answers obtained.
Posted 17 February 2008 - 03:52 PM
Edited by DandyDon, 17 February 2008 - 03:53 PM.
Posted 18 February 2008 - 06:20 AM
Depending on the OW course and how it was taught, it might not be too much of a leap to add a Nitrox dive or two in conjunction with the OW training. I do it fairly regularly, by offering a couple of Nitrox dives as "add on" experience dives, after the 4 OW dives are completed. Of course, my OW certification trip is a minimum of 7 dives, so that is not hard to do. Also, my OW class is about half a Nitrox class anyway, with discussion on Gas Laws, O2 tox, etc. My agency requires me to teach that material in the OW course, so I see no reason not to take advantage of the "captive" audience (and possibly generate interest in a follow-on course, i.e. "free marketing")On PADI rules - whatever happened to their suggestion that the final dive of the OW course could be on nitrox and count as the first of the two mandatory dives for the Nitrox course?
I have changed my thinking on this issue considerably in the last couple of years. About a year ago, I got curious and pulled some data on AOW and Nitrox certifications that I have issued in the last 10 years. What I found was that about 70% of the people who took one of the courses, took the other one within just a few months. I believe that was probably due to my policy of encouraging people to do Nitrox experience dives on their AOW certs and/or combine their Nitrox certification dives with an AOW certification. So starting this year, I am offering the certs in a combined format, with a pool session on buoyancy (similar to PADI's PPB, except taught with a DIR "spin").I wouldn't teach an OW course on nitrox, not one in the style of PADI courses anyway, as I think there's too much to take in all at once. But I do teach it, not as part of the AOW course but in parallel with it.
Edited by JimG, 18 February 2008 - 06:22 AM.
Posted 18 February 2008 - 07:19 AM
Posted 18 February 2008 - 09:51 AM
I disagree that they are "not related".I think the Nitrox course should be separate from AOW. They are not related and the nitrox course should be more than 1/2 hour class. More like a 1/2 day class with dives.
Posted 18 February 2008 - 10:58 AM
My "thinking outside the box" approach on this has led me to believe that dive training needs to be "decompartmentalized". I believe that a smaller number of "quality" courses will serve divers better than the a'la carte approach that we have now (i.e. start with OW and then fill in the gaps with smaller "bites" from a bunch of shorter Specialty courses). My view on OW vs AOW vs Nitrox is that we really only need two courses, with the following learning outcomes:
So that is how I have started structuring my courses. Of course I do not teach for a dive shop, so I have a little more freedom and flexibility to teach my courses the way I see fit. Not every instructor necessarily has that luxury
- An entry-level (i.e. OW) course that teaches basic safety information about diving, and prepares divers to dive safely at depths to 60 feet, utilizing breathing gas that is appropriate to that depth range (i.e. air)
- A second-level course that drills down on buoyancy, propulsion, dive/gas planning (including air consumption calcs), and prepares divers to dive safely at depths to 100 feet, utilizing breathing gas that is appropriate to that depth range (i.e. Nitrox)
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