Quote:
Originally Posted by harbour seal
hello dive oceanos,
this whole thread strikes me as rather dubious.
course outlines are generally written by highly trained people, often those who train other instructors will be the ones to write course materials.
how is it that you are writing course outlines if you are not even an instructor? how will you know the approach of the actual instructors or even what they are qualified to teach? if i were one of your prospective students, i would be very concerned to learn that you cobbled together your course materials from reading the internet.
additionally, do you think that kirk and mandy from PFI or Martin from FIT will send you their course materials, without taking the course? likely, no.
just my 2 cents.
cheers,
sean
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Hello Sean,
I aknowledge your scepticism. It is probably derived by a concept of seen the free diving training up till now as it was medicine in the medieval ages, as I wrote above. Today, the proper course outlines are being developed by a team of people. Scientific approach is needed, experience is needed and know how is needed. I have no doubt that the courses that are being taught are highly scientific, sound in their teaching methodology and highly rewarding for the student. Alas, we want to have our own version with our own approach. This project is a team work and there are members of the team that are free diving instructors and highly experienced free divers. Their experiences start back in the 70s where the most of us were infants or not borned yet.
Then, why it is I who have been proposed to lead the writing of the course outline then? As you stated above the course outlines are being written by the ones who train the instructors. I am a course director and an exerienced diving educator for many years now. Now what is a course director? He is the one who trains instructors. Why me and not any one other course director? Apparently because my knowledge about human physiology goes beyond the one of the average course director (university background in relative subject, further education and training with a number of pharmaceutical companies for about 9 years, individual daily study with an accumulated study time of more than 10000 hours in relative subjects, and an active SCUBA diving professional). I consider my self as not one without any relationship with diving related training. I am doing this for 7 years as a professional. I have trained instructors and technical divers among others. An other reason is because I know how to write a course outline according to the agency standards. As for the internet, yes it is being used as a tool for market research. Back in the early 90s i remeber that we were spending hours in the university library searching for bibliographic references through medline which was available in compact disks. Today the same function is availalbe through internet from your home, any time you want it. Who does not using it today to get information on anything? Do you really think that all courses that are out there are inventing the wheel from scratch? Do you really think that all instructors invented the diving physics, or wrote a book about human physiology? This is science. You basically use previous experience and observation to go ahead. You are not wasting any time inventing something that has been allready invented. And of course you add your 2 cents by doing a little bit of original research and include that in the new version of the course.
Education in all areas, no matter what the subject is, either recreational SCUBA diving, or Free diving, or Technical diving, shares common elements and should be based in more or the less the same basic principles. The individual touch of the members who are involved in free diving will contribute to the development of a scientific, challenging and rewarding course.
